Interactive Unit Guides

mis-, mal-, anti-, contra-, dis-, non-, un-, in/im/il- and dic(t) I find it a bit disturbing that the English language has over eight prefixes with a negative connotation and less than a handful that denote positivity. What does that say about our culture? Anywho, all of the listed prefixes can be defined as "wrong, against, not." Some of these are more prevalent than others but all worth teaching. Note that the other meaning of in- (into) will be taught in a later unit. I

Sh e sells sea sh ells by the sea sh ore. First off, my definition of a digraph: Two or more letters that make one sound. Some scholars make this more specific and only include an unique phoneme (e.g. /th/) but I include any two letters that make one sound (e.g. <wr> = /r/, <ff> = /f/). In this unit, I'm solely focusing on consonant digraphs. I lump vowel digraphs into vowel teams. This poster is included in the zip file! Any decent science of reading based program teaches

Power-Hitters While re-, con-, and en/em- are not connected by meaning, they're prevalent in everyday language and fairly literal. The one who/that which suffixes, -er/or, -ee, -ist, -ant/ent are all of the above: common, literal, and connected by meaning. While the definition given by IMSE is "one who/that which" I often use the wording "a person who/a thing that" as it's more relatable for high schoolers. Note that the other meaning of -er/or was taught during the Inflectio

Why oh why does <y> have so many roles? Despite the fact that we teach our kindergarteners that "<y> says /y/", this is the least common role of the versatile<y>. Far more often, <y> functions as a vowel. Luckily, <y> isn't capricious and generally follows the rules below. Below is the interactive Unit Plan where you can links to lessons, the typical grouping, methodology, suggested duration, and rationale. The PDF column will take you to directly to TPT. You can downloa

Good Things Come in Threes I suppose it's debatable if suffixing rules are "good", however I think it is good news that only three rules exist. Suffixing can seem overwhelming, as evidenced by the number of adults I've encountered that don't know when to double the final consonant, drop silent <e>, and change <y> to <I>. And there you have the three rules. I use inquiry to introduce each rule. Students have several opportunities to implement each rule before learning a new

The Many Faces of VCe Vowel-Consonant-e, Silent e, Magic e, Bossy e...whatever you'd like to call the phonological patterns that indicates a long vowel sound caused by a single, silent final e. That's the focus of this unit. I teach this unit in conjunction with the three suffixing rules: Dropping Silent e, Change the y to i, and Double the Final Consonant. Below is the interactive Unit Plan where you can find tons of helpful links. Each blog post will include the typical

Our first suffixes of the year! At this point in the year, students learned parts of speech , homophones , and critical foundational terms . We are finally ready to learn some suffixes! This unit complements my -ed x3 phonology Unit . My data demonstrates that the majority of my students don't know the three pronunciations of -ed. As mentioned in my last Interactive Unit Guide , I think teaching suffixes according to their derivations, rather than their abstract defi

The -ed Files: A Mystery in Three Sounds The three pronunciations of -ed is, indeed, a mystery to the majority of my students. After students demonstrate mastery of the Unit 2: Short Vowels, I like to introduce the sounds of -ed. This unit is especially helpful for Emergent Multilingual Learners. I teach this unit alongside our Morphology Unit on Inflectional Suffixes to ensure that students know the meaning of -ed as well as the three possible pronunciations of /id/, /

A bicyle can't stand on its own because it's two-tired . Yay for corny homophone jokes.... that statement may be redundant. We have another outlier unit this year…in fact, I don’t teach any morphemes at all. Think of this unit as Foundations 2.0. That’s because I’m not ready to introduce suffixes until students can define nouns, verbs, and adjectives/adverbs. Students typically bomb the parts-of-speech portion of my pre-assessments. Even if they recall that a noun is a “pe

Schwa: The Most Common Vowel Sound After students demonstrate mastery of the Foundations of Phonology, Unit 1, I'm ready to introduce...

Let's jump in! After analyzing the pre-assessment data, we’re ready to begin Unit 1: Foundations. This is the time to go slow to go fast in the long run. In the past, I’ve made the mistake of rushing through this unit, assuming students would fill in the gaps later. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. Without a solid understanding of morphemes, prefixes, bases, and suffixes, it might as well be a foreign language to them. If you could use a quick refresher, feel free to check out m

It's time to dive in! After analyzing the pre-assessment data, we’re ready to begin Unit 1: Foundations. This is the time to go slow to...