Teaching spelling generalisations: Sail away transcript
Elaine Stanley:
This is a snip of our Literacy Hub progression, showing that ai and ay are taught in Phase 11. This is where our ‘Sail away’ spelling generalisation would be used as part of instruction. What we're going to do is show how the spelling generalisation can be incorporated into your usual instructional model for your phonics lessons as you introduce new letter–sound correspondences.
This is our phonics lesson to introduce the ai and ay letter–sound correspondences. It follows the normal structure for our phonics lessons, but our spelling generalisation, ‘Sail away’, is going to be incorporated into the lesson as we go through the parts of the lesson. What we do is introduce the graphemes first and the spelling generalisation. Then we practise reading words and applying what we're learning to those words when we decode them. Then we'll spell some words and then we have our irregular word there for this lesson. We're not going to address that today because that's not our focus. You can find more information about how we introduce irregular words in Topic 2 of our series in the link below.
We will then read some sentences applying those letter–sound correspondences in the spelling generalisation, and then write some sentences. Then it's our check for understanding, and then independent practice if students are ready.
Here we’ve put the link for the ‘Sail away’ lesson (the slide set) and worksheet to go with this lesson.
If you would like more information about our instructional model or explicit direct instruction, you can look back at Topic 2.
We're going to focus on parts of the lesson with the stars now, and Kerrie's going to act as one of my students so we can show you how this lesson would run with that spelling generalisation incorporated into part of it.
This is how I would introduce this lesson to my students.
Teacher:
Today we are learning two of the most common ways to make a long ‘a’ sound in a word, ai and ay. This spelling generalisation, ‘Sail away’, is going to help us know when to use ai and when to use ay in a word when we hear a long ‘a’ sound. If we hear the long ‘a’ sound in the middle or at the start of a word, we're going to use ai just like in the word ‘sail’. In the word ‘sail’, we can hear /s/-/ai/-/l/ and that /ā/ sound is in the middle, so we use ai.
If we hear the long ‘a’ sound at the end of a word, we're going to use ay, just like in the word away. In that word we can hear /a/-/w/-/ay/, we've got the /ā/ sound at the end, so we use ay. I'm going to practise the sounds for ai and ay now and say where they're used in words.
Then I would model making the letters in the air or on the big whiteboard for students, and I would say ai says /ā/ in the middle and sometimes at the start of a word. I would do that three times. Then ay says /ā/ at the end of the word, and I would do that three times as well. Then students would join in and do it with us. We'll just demonstrate one of each.
Teacher:
Kerrie, we'll do it together.
Student and teacher:
ai says /ā/ in the middle and sometimes at the start of a word. ay says /ā/ at the end of a word.
Then we would make sure everyone's done that correctly.
Teacher:
Beautiful. We can rub that out.
Then I would model reading some words with ai and ay and explain why the ai or ay patterns have been used depending on where I hear the sound in the word. We'll show how we do that with students.
Teacher:
We're going to read some words together now, let's use our letters and sounds.
Teacher and student:
/h/, /ai/, /l/, hail.
Elaine Stanley:
Then you might have a discussion about what hail is to make sure they understand the word. Then I might start just asking students some questions.
Teacher:
Why have we used ai in this word? Kerrie, can you tell us?
Student:
Because the long ‘a’ sound is in the middle of the word.
Teacher:
That's right. If I listen to that word /h/, /ai/, /l/, I can hear that /ā/ sound in the middle, so we've used ai.
This extra layer of questioning is what really helps students understand and apply the spelling generalisation as you go. Then we'll repeat that word.
Teacher and student:
Hail.
Teacher:
Next one.
Teacher and student:
/r/, /ay/, ray.
Teacher:
Like a ray of sunshine. Kerrie, why have we used ay this time?
Student:
Because the long ‘a’ sound is at the end of the word.
Teacher:
That’s right.
Then again, I would model spelling some words and really segmenting the sounds. But we'll do this one together.
Teacher:
Our first word we're going to spell together is rain. Let's stretch that word.
Teacher and student:
/r/-/ai/-/n/, rain.
Teacher:
Show me what sounds you can hear.
Teacher and student:
/r/-/ai/-/n/.
Teacher:
Now can you show me where your /ā/ sound is in that word?
Student:
In the middle.
Teacher:
In the middle. I want you to have a think about which letter pattern you're going to use to write this word. And you can do that now. And then when you're ready, you can chin your word to see if yours looks like mine. All right.
And I'd be checking everybody's work.
Teacher:
Okay Kerrie, can you tell me why you've used ai in that word?
Student:
Because the long ‘a’ sound is in the middle of the word.
Teacher:
That's right. Well done. Okay, we can rub those out.
Then we would do the same with say and day. Students would explain why they've chosen different letter patterns. Then we move on to reading sentences, incorporating words with the target sounds and spelling generalisations. By this stage, students are pretty good at decoding. They may just slow down and sound out once with the new target sounds.
Teacher:
I'm going to get you to read that for me when I point to the words.
Student:
There was a snail in the mail.
Teacher:
Right. Let's re-read.
Teacher and student:
There was a snail in the mail.
Teacher:
Now, Kerrie, could you tell me which words in our sentence are ‘Sail away’ words?
Student:
Snail and mail.
Teacher:
Good. Okay, now I can see that they both have ai in them. Can you tell me why that is?
Student:
Because the /ā/ sound is in the middle of both words.
Teacher:
That's right. Well done.
Then we would move on to writing a sentence. I would tell everyone the sentence and get them to repeat it.
Teacher:
Our sentence is ‘He saw a tail next to the hay.’ Can you repeat that back to me?
Teacher and student:
He saw a tail next to the hay.
Teacher:
Right. I would like everybody to have a go at writing that sentence please, and I want you to think about all the things you need in your sentence. You need a capital letter and full stop and really focus on those ‘Sail away’ words. ‘He saw a tail next to the hay.’
And I would be checking everyone's work and helping students where I need to.
Teacher:
‘He saw a tail next to the hay.’ All right everybody, before you chin your work, I want you to check your sentence, make sure you've got your capital letter and full stop. And I would like you to circle any ‘Sail away’ words in that sentence. When you're ready, you can chin your board. Kerrie, can you tell me which words are ‘Sail away’ words in our sentence?
Student:
Tail and hay.
Teacher:
Okay. And why does tail have that ai?
Student:
Because the /ā/ sound is in the middle of the word.
Teacher:
And can you tell me why you've used ay in hay?
Student:
Because the /ā/ sound is at the end of the word.
Teacher:
Beautiful. Well done.
When you've done all those parts of the lesson, you would move on to your check for understanding. This might be where your worksheet comes in. This is what the worksheet looks like.
You can use this to check students are able to understand and apply. You can use it as the check for understanding, or you may choose to use this for independent practice following the lesson.
Once you've taught students the ‘Sail away’ spelling generalisation, and these two letter–sound correspondences, then you're going to include them in your daily review for the students to really revise and apply the spelling generalisation. What you would do then is include some slides like these ones. You'd include the letter patterns. When that first slide comes up, students would tell you the sound. They'd say /ā/, and then again you give that extra layer of questioning. I might say to students, ‘When do I use ai?’ They'd be able to tell me in the middle or sometimes at the start of the word.
Then when they see ay, they would tell me the sound /ā/, and again, I would say, ‘When do we use ay?’ Students would say at the end of a word. Then when they're decoding some of the words like pain, I would say, ‘Why has that word got ai?’ And they'd be able to tell me because the /ā/ sound is in the middle. We would do the same for reading the sentence level and writing sentences.
I might get them again to circle those ‘Sail away’ words and explain why they've used different letter patterns. This is from our daily review slide set and we have an example daily review slide set for you. You can adapt that as you would like to for your letter–sound correspondences.
https://www.literacyhub.edu.au/search/daily-review-example/
There's more information about daily review in Topic 2, if you'd like to go back and have a look at any information about those.
The great thing with these spelling generalisations is that often different ones are taught in exactly the same way. Once you know how to teach students about ‘Sail away’, the same process applies for the other ones in the spelling generalisations document.
For the ones listed here, the first letter pattern is in the middle or at the start of a word, and the last one is usually at the end of a word. The last two come later in our progression, Phase 14 and Phase 19, they're a little bit trickier because for ou and ow, it's usually ou in the middle or at the start, usually ow at the end unless the word ends in l, n or d, and then then ow gets moved to the middle. Like in ‘growl’, ‘crown’ and ‘crowd’, for example. And with ‘sauce on a prawn’, same thing; if a word ends in l, n or k this time, then you use aw in the middle of a word. But that's later on when students are used to the process of thinking about a few outside examples, but generally the rule stands, and they get used to coping with that information about exceptions pretty well.