You need to use the “acknowledge and delay” technique. That means acknowledge “bow” by saying something like, “You know some pretty advanced spelling.” Then delay by saying something like, “But these (pointing at the 5 yellow vowels) are our only choices for now. Which one of those would you use for the /oe/ sound?”

Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple rule for spelling the sound of /s/. But here’s a process of elimination:Use an S if the letter C could not make the /s/ sound at that spot. So if /s/ is followed by a consonant, you must use S. Or if /s/ is followed by an a, o, or u, you must use S.
But if /s/ is followed by a Watch-Out vowel, it could be either a C or an S. If a student knows for sure (because he has written or read that word frequently enough to memorize it), fine.

If not, the student needs to look it up — or ask someone.

In the next lesson, the student will get an electronic spell checker, so it will be easy for him to look up words. In the meantime, just tell the student if he isn’t sure.

NEVER make a student with dyslexia look up the spelling of a word using a traditional printed dictionary.

BE is actually a prefix, and prefixes are never accented.The prefix BE has dropped out of common usage, so you will only find the prefix BE in old-fashioned words, such as begotten, beware, beyond (yonder is the base word), believe (lieve is a Latin root or baseword), etc.

Think back on Syllable Division Rule #2. If the second letter is a Rotten Letter, usually you don’t divide them. The key is the word usually.This is one of those times that you will divide them.

It is because BE is actually a prefix, although it is an old-fashioned prefix that is not used much anymore. You will find it in words such as behold, belong, begotten, beyond, and between.In Level 5, your student will learn that prefixes always break off into their own syllable.

Yes. It not only helps to have him actively participate, but more importantly, it forces his eyes to actually look at the letters.

Teach him this trick. In multi-syllable words, the only time /all/ will be spelled with AL is when the entire first syllable only says /all/, as in almost, already, alright, etc.If there is any other sound in that first syllable, then use OL, as in holiday, politics, volcano, jolly, college, lollipop, etc.
Similarly, if he hears /all/ in any other syllable, it will almost always be OL, as in apology, abolish, biology, etc. — unless it is a proper noun (the name of something), such as Malta or Baltic.

Schwas only happen in a syllable that is NOT accented.In most two-syllable words, it is the last syllable that is not accented. That’s why in 98% of the multisyllable words that end in Vowel-L, the vowel goes to schwa.
But there are a few words where the accent is on the last syllable, such as ho-TEL, mo-TEL, and cuh-NAL.

Canal is a French word, as is hotel. French words are often accented on the last syllable, as you’ll learn in Level 9. Motel is a combination of hotel and motor.

If the last syllable is accented, then the vowel will not go to schwa.

There are regional dialects, and in some parts of the country, people do pronounce that middle syllable with the /uh/ sound.Tell your son that Susan Barton is teaching us to speak with the most widely accepted dialect — the same one that you hear when listening to the 6 o’clock national news.
It is critical that he understands and masters the Confident rule because it is going to be referred to over and over again during the remaining Barton levels.

So when reading, you need to gently insist that he say the word as written — with either the short-i or short-e sound. If he does not, you need to stop him and ask him to say it carefully — exactly as written. If necessary, you can highlight the open-i or open-e in the middle syllable as a reminder.

At this point, your student only knows three of the seven syllable types, and he has not yet learned all of the syllable division rules.

Therefore, he cannot read most books — not even easy reader books — without reverting to guessing. As soon as he reverts to guessing, you lose. And it makes tutoring much harder.

So instead, have him read our new “stand-alone” chapter books. There are 10 that can be read by students who have completed Level 3, and 8 that can be ready by student who have completed Level 4.

Units are always 3 letters that appear at the END of a word and make an unusual sound.

In the word Cindy, the letters IND are NOT at the end of a word. So they are not acting like a Unit. That’s why they do not make an unusual sound in that word.

So in Cindy, there are just two regular consonants between the vowels. That’s why it ends up dividing as CIN-DY.

A Native American tribe, named the Kansa, lived in that area before it was a state. When the American explorers discovered that tribe, they named the territory after them but added an S to make it plural. That’s how it ended up being called Kansas.By the way, many of our explorers were dyslexic, (such as Meriweather Lewis of the Lewis & Clark expedition). Those dyslexic explorers probably did not know the Kiss the Cat spelling rule. If they had, they would have spelled that tribe’s name as Cansa.

Notice the letters INC are making the same sound as unit INK. Every once in a while, a unit will not be at the end (as in this word).By the way, the reason it is spelled with a C instead of K is because it is a Latin word. Whenever you hear /kt/ at the end of a word, it is Latin, and it is always spelled C-T.

When spelling a dictated word, you need to clearly pronounce them with the short-i or short-e sound. If necessary, practice saying them out loud before the lesson. If, when he taps each syllable on the table, you can hear that he switched the middle vowel to /uh/, stop the process, apologize for not saying it correctly, and dictate it again — hanging on to that middle vowel sound a bit longer. Do not let him spell it until he makes the correct sounds when tapping the syllables on the table.

n this lesson, you learned that if two small simple words, used together, mean one special thing, then write them as one long word — a compound word.We explained it using playground and lipstick as examples. The word play by itself means something, and the word ground by itself means something. But playground means one special thing, so you write it as one long word — a compound word.
Very few compound words need hyphens. You only need to hyphenate a compound word if:

* The first word is self. Self is actually a prefix, and it is the only prefix that is always followed by a hyphen, as in self-correction, self-addressed, self-storage, etc.

or

* There are more than 2 words in the compound word, such as stick-in-the-mud or know-it-all.

There are other times when hyphens are required, but they would not be confused with compound words.

When spelling the sound of /k/ when it is between 2 vowels, you must follow this sequence: C, CK, K.Sometimes it helps to write them in a column, like this:
C
CK
K

Start at the top. Find the first one that works. Then stop. You’re done.

So start by trying a C. If it works, stop. You’re done.

If a C would not say /k/ in that spot, then try the next one in the sequence: CK. But you can only use CK right after a short vowel.

If a CK would not work, then use the last one: K.

So in the word cactus, you’d build it as ca__tus. Then you’d try the first choice in the sequence: C. A C would say /k/ there because the next letter is not a watch-out vowel. So stop. You’re done.

Muskrat is a compound word: Musk and Rat.So Musk follows the Milk Truck rule

Let’s review the Rotten Letter rule.If there are 2 letters between the vowels, you must check the second letter to see if it is an R or an L.
If so, usually you do not split those two letters. Instead, both move to the end of the word.

Notice the word USUALLY. That means every once in a while, you will split them. The word problem is one of those words. So is the word diplomat.

Splitting apart the Rotten Letter happens more often in three-syllable words than in two-syllable words.

No, do NOT mark vowel teams that way.There are 24 vowel teams in all. You are only introducing 2 of them in this lesson.
That type of marking does NOT work in most vowel teams. For instance, in the next lesson, you will be teaching EW. It does not make the long-e sound.

In Level 8, you’ll introduce vowel teams such as OO and AW, which do not make a long or a short sound. They make their special “vowel team” sound.

So do not mark either vowel in a vowel team — because it takes both of them to make their special sound.

If you need to help a student notice that the two vowels “are touching” and therefore, are a vowel team, you could have the student underline both vowels using one continuous line.

Stop looking at the dictionary pronunciation key. The dictionary was written long before Dr. Orton and Anna Gillingham came up with their way of explaining reading and spelling, so the Orton-Gillingham approach doesn’t always match the dictionary’s pronunciation key.The Barton System is an Orton-Gillingham-based system.
We do not teach that EN changes to Schwa because in Orton-Gillingham, it does not.

Instead, tutors carefully pronounce the short-e sound in words like chosen. We do NOT pronounce it as /cho/-/sun/. Instead, we say /cho/-/sen/.

It means you are not dictating the word cabin correctly.

The Happy rule is a SPELLING rule. When a student is spelling, he must listen to how you say the word, then figure out how to write it down.

For the Happy rule to work, you must pronounce the words exactly as shown in the tutor manual.

For instance, rabbit would be shown as RAH-bit. AH means you pronounce the a as a short-a. Notice the /b/ sound is pronounced in the second syllable. Using the Happy rule, your student would know that for the a to be short, it must be in a Closed syllable. Since he cannot hear any sound that closes it off, he must double the next sound that he CAN hear, which is the /b/ at the beginning of the second syllable. That’s why rabbit ends up with two b’s.

The word cabin would be shown as CAB-in. That means you would say it with the /b/ sound at the end of the first syllable. Your student would hear the short-a, but since there IS a sound closing off that syllable, he wouldn’t have to double anything in order to make the a short. That’s why cabin only needs one b.

You must listen carefully when your student taps each syllable on the table to make sure he has put the correct sound into the correct syllable. For instance, if you say Tennis, but he taps TEN-is and you let him continue, he will end up spelling the word incorrectly.

If you hear your student tap the syllables incorrectly, stop at that point, apologize for not saying the word clearly, and YOU tap the syllables while he listens. Then have him tap the syllables by himself — and listen carefully. Wait until he says the sound in the correct syllable before you let him build or write the word.

Congratulate your son for having “super sharp” ears. Tell him you will explain why that happens in Level 10.For now, you can teach him this spelling trick. Whether he hears /cum/ or /com/ at the beginning of a multi-syllable word, it will always be spelled C-O-M.
The only exception is the word Cumberland, as in the Cumberland Gap

You’re missing the difference between a reading rule and a spelling rule.When spelling, the Cry Baby rule states that when you hear a long-i at the end of a word, like cry, the best way to spell it is with an Y.
In this lesson, you extended that rule. You taught that the best way to spell a long-i is with a Y — no matter how many syllables the word has, such as multiply and July.

But when READING, the most common sound a Y at the end of a multi-syllable word makes is the long-e sound. So when reading an unknown word, a student should try that sound first.

But if reading it with the long-e sound turns it into a nonsense word, such as de-nee, then the student should read it with the lesser-common sound of Y — the long-i sound.

ou count tiles.You never ever split a digraph or a unit. So although words like kingdom and anthem have 3 letters between the vowels, they only have two tiles. That means you would use Rule #2 on those words.