Teaching spelling generalisations: Gentle Cindy transcript
Elaine Stanley:
This is ‘Gentle Cindy’, and this spelling generalisation helps us to tell when a g and c will make their soft sounds, when g will say /j/ in a word, and c will say /s/. It's another spelling generalisation showing how adjacent letters signify the sound those letters will make.
Before learning ‘Gentle Cindy’, students need to actually have quite a bit of background knowledge that they bring to this lesson because the ‘Gentle Cindy’ word types are actually more complex when ‘Gentle Cindy’ starts to kick in. They need to have an understanding of how to read and spell multisyllabic words because often ‘Gentle Cindy’ words are more than one syllable. They need to have an understanding of silent e words or split digraph, or some people call it ‘bossy e’ or ‘magic e’. I like to teach it as silent e. I'll show you how I explain it.
If we have a word that has one vowel, then a consonant, and then a final e at the end of the word, what happens in that word is that the e at the end can jump over one consonant only – it has to be just one consonant – and it can help that other vowel to say its long sound. Then the e gives up its own sound so it stays silent. Then if we are decoding that word, it would be /d/-/ā/-/t/, and no sound for the e, date. Then the next word, the e can jump over that one consonant, help the ‘i’ to say its long sound, so we get /b/-/ī/-/k/, bike, and the e is silent. There is also the need to understand final y; these are all in the spelling generalisations document, which is linked below.
https://www.literacyhub.edu.au/search/spelling-generalisations-syllable-division-and-morphology/
Before students learn about syllable types, they need to understand that if they see a short word that's only two or three letters, then the y is going to make a long ‘i’ sound like in ‘by’ or ‘spy’. If they see a word that's longer than two or three letters, the y is going to make an e sound like in ‘body’ or ‘family’. The other thing they need to understand for ‘Gentle Cindy’ words is r-controlled vowels. When a vowel is followed by an r, it makes a different sound. We've got ar saying /ar/, or ir saying /ur/, for example, and or saying /or/. They need to know all those things to understand ‘Gentle Cindy’.
This spelling generalisation is taught in Phase 17 of our progression. You can see it's quite far along and you can tell by the words there, the example words, that students are now working with words with those more complex word structures as we said.
As usual, we use exactly the same lesson format, instructional model and processes through the lesson. The only difference this time is we've got a little image again to help us. We're going to demonstrate the parts of the lesson with the stars, and here are links to the slide set and worksheet that come with this lesson.
This is how I would introduce this lesson to students.
Teacher:
Today we are learning new sounds that the letters g and c can make. We've already learned that g usually makes the sound /g/, and c usually makes the sound /k/. Now we are learning a new sound for each of these letters. This is ‘Gentle Cindy’, and she's going to help us know when g will make its soft sound /j/ and c will make its soft sound /s/ in a word. ‘Gentle Cindy’ shows us that g and c will make their soft sounds when they follow the letters e, i and y. You can see on her face there to help us remember. Our spelling generalisation is g and c usually make a soft sound /j/ and /s/ when followed by e, i or y.
Elaine Stanley:
Okay, so then I would demonstrate the two sounds now that I know for each one. I'm going to trace them and say:
Teacher:
G says /g/, and sometimes /j/. G says /g/ and sometimes /j/. C says /k/ and sometimes /s/. C says /k/ and sometimes /s/.
Then students would do the same. Now, I'm going to demonstrate how I would decode some of these words.
Teacher:
What I would look at first is my ‘Gentle Cindy’ letters. I'm going to look at my c and work out what sound it's going to make. I can see that in this word it's followed by an e, which is one of my ‘Gentle Cindy’ letters, so I know the c is going to make a /s/ sound. Then I could decode this word, /s/, /e/, /l/, cell.
And when students are working with these, they will probably recognise as well, ‘Oh, that's a “floss” word as well’. This is where different things start to apply in some of these words because they come together. Our next one.
Teacher:
This time I'm looking for ‘Gentle Cindy’ first, so I'm looking at the g, I can see in this word it's followed by an e, that's one of our ‘Gentle Cindy’ letters. I know that g is going to say /j/, but also I can see this is one of our silent e words, so the e is going to jump over the g and the a is going to make its long sound. If I decode this word, it's going to be /ā/-/j/, and then the e is silent, age.
Then the next one. I'm looking at my ‘Gentle Cindy’ letters first. I'm looking at the c, what sound is it going to make? I can see it's followed by y, which is one of our ‘Gentle Cindy’ letters. This c is going to say /s/, but I can also see this is a final y word, because it's y at the end, and it's longer than two and three letters so I know it's going to make an e sound. Now I can decode it, /f/, /a/, /n/, /s/, /ē/, fancy, fancy.
Okay, so it's applying all of these things together now at this stage. The students are going to join in, and we're going to do this word together.
Teacher:
What do we need to think about first with this word, Kerrie?
Student:
I'm looking at the c and I can see an e comes after it. So, this c will make a soft sound /s/.
Teacher:
That's right, and is there something else you notice about this word?
Student:
It's a silent e word, so the e will help the i to make its long sound.
Teacher:
Can you decode that word.
Student:
/ī/-/s/, ice.
Teacher:
Beautiful. Well done.
Then we would do the same again for spelling words. Again, they're trickier, more complex words. My first word is ‘face’, so I'm going to stretch it and then identify the sounds, /f/-/ā/-/s/. Now students will be cluey as well at this point, so they'll know if they hear a /j/ or a /s/, it's likely to be a ‘Gentle Cindy’. I would model thinking: ‘Now, I think I can hear a /s/, so I'm pretty sure that's going to be one of our ‘Gentle Cindy’ letters. But to make it say /s/ there has to be one of those letters after it, but I can't hear another sound, so I'm thinking it might be a silent e word, and there's an e after that c. I'm going to spell my word as a silent e word and have a look.’ It's bringing all those complex things together, but students will start to clue into this as well.
Then they would spell ‘race’ and they would be thinking the same way about that. Then you do the same with words like ‘germ’. Now that's one of our r-controlled words, vowel words. We've got the er making the /er/ sound, but there's still the e after the g, so they know the g is going to make the /j/ sound in that one, and then we've got ‘space’ as well.
Then reading at the sentence level, so if we were working this one out, first thing we look at is ‘Gentle Cindy’, because we are thinking about that first. What sound is that first g going to make? It's followed by e so it's going to make a /j/, but I can also see that's a final y word. It's longer than two or three letters so it's going to say e. Then we could decode /j/-/e/-/r/-/ē/, Gerry, and then we'll work out the other words as well, applying ‘Gentle Cindy’ where we need to.
Then we move to sentence writing. It might be a sentence like, ‘The mice were stuck in the cage.’ When students come to that ‘Gentle Cindy’, they're going to think about which letters they use and what other things they need to apply in that sentence.
At this point when you're teaching different spelling generalisations, this is where students will start to make some connections between the generalisations you're teaching because some are actually related. Students will start to realise that ‘Gentle Cindy’ is actually related to this c or k rule, because if we had c with e, i or y, we've just learned that it would actually change the sound it makes and it would make a /s/, a soft sound. That's why we have to have k with those different letters to keep that /k/ sound. They start to make those connections, which is really exciting for students. They love working all those things out.
In your daily review, after you've taught ‘Gentle Cindy’ and the soft sounds for g or c, you would include some slides like this in your daily review. You would have the letters come up and now students can apply both sounds they've learned. When they see g they would say /g/ and sometimes /j/, and then when they see c, /k/ and sometimes /s/. And some people like to even go a little step further, especially with older students and they might include some slides like those next two, where the black letter is really just a marker to tell you what sound the g or c is going to make. When students see that first slide with gi, they would have to work out: ‘Now “i” is one of my “Gentle Cindy” letters, so that g is going to say /j/’, and they tell you that sound. The next one: ‘No, it's not one of our “Gentle Cindy” letters, so that c is going to say /k/’, and they give you the sound. Then they would apply the spelling generalisation to decode some words, work at the sentence level, and again you could dictate a sentence where they can circle the ‘Gentle Cindy’ words.