Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.
I'm a tutor at Morley College at BEC in Rotherhithe in South London, and I work with adults of all ages, who want to improve their literacy skills, including reading.
There are many visuals strategies we can use to recognise a word, for example the word misunderstanding.
We could perhaps use colour to highlight bits in the word to help us figure out what the word might be.
So, we could highlight the prefix, mis.
It's got a common suffixing, ing.
It has the words under and stand in the middle.
Sometimes, people come across letter patterns in words that are pronounced the same way, for example, double E in heel or feel or kneel.
Whereas other letter patterns can be pronounced differently, as ou in through, but it's different in the word trout, which has an ow sound.
So, one spelling pattern may represent different sounds, so it's important for people to try out that pattern in different words.
A letter pattern like ‘ow’ may sound different in different words. As in ‘slow down’, where it sounds like 'oh'.
Quick tips for tutors
Recognising letters and words includes:
- The importance of alphabetic sequence in accessing indexed information (as in dictionaries, phone books)
- Using common letter patterns to support reading fluency
- Understanding the contributions of other languages to the English language
Downloadable Factsheets
Entry 3 - Alphabetical order
An introduction to recognising the importance of alphabet sequence.
Level 1 - Recognising letter patterns
An introduction to recognising common letter patterns.
Downloadable Worksheets
Entry 1 & 2 - Alphabet pairs
An activity in matching upper case and lower case letters to make pairs.
Entry 1 & 2 - Common word bingo
A bingo activity to match common words.
Entry 3 - Spot the short words
Spotting familiar short words in text.
Entry 3 - Alphabetical order: names 1
Exercise in sorting family names using first letter only.
Entry 3 - Alphabetical order: names 2
Exercise in sorting family names using first, second and third letters.
Entry 3 - Alphabetical order: businesses
Exercise in sorting types of business using first, second and third letters.
Level 1 - Reading for fluency
Exercise in reading for fluency.
Level 1 - Words from French
Exercise in recognising words that derive from French.
