Struggling reader – what we did next

Having reported that one of my struggling reader pupils had suddenly turned a corner and begun to take on alternative spellings, I thought it might be fun to report on my weekly lessons with him and plot his progress.

So, today my student arrived with his scooter but without his folder – third week in a row! (Obvious organisational difficulties here!)

Last week we  practiced reading words and text with four alternative spellings for /ee/.  This week we started the lesson with a bit of consolidation:  I gave my pupil a list of two-syllable words with /ee/ spellings in them.  The list came from the ‘Alba Series’ workbook.  I asked him to chunk them and read them.  Mostly, he had no problems at all.  This was a great indicator that he had not forgotten the spellings taught and could read them within longer words.

I introduced the new learning: alternative spellings for /oe/.  We started off by world-building, one alternative spelling at a time, leaving the split vowel spelling to last.  The Alba workbook has a useful worksheet for the split vowel which requires the pupil to cut ‘split’ the letters oe into two separate letters and place them in the correct places to build a word.  This we did and having already learned about the split spelling a-e, he knew exactly what to do and how to read the new words.

Next came a sorting and spelling activity.  My pupil had to make four columns for the four alternatives and list some words with /oe/ spellings in the correct columns. He then read the words out loud to me.

To break things up a bit and because he loves the computer he played Wordshark ( games with /oe/ spellings).  We concluded with reading the next book from the Alba Series ‘The Long Road Home’.  I have now realised that is really important for my pupils to reread the texts I give them so that they develop fluency so homework was to finish reading the books twice and be ready for a quiz about it next week.

This was a typical Sounds-Write lesson using additional resources from the Alba Series.  I am feeling very optimistic that my pupil will, at last, start catching up.  He is in Year 6 so it is crucial to make up for lost time.

Hopefully he will come with his folder next lesson!?!

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