Colorful words help.

[HeatherE]

My daughter and I both struggle with the colorful words.

Example:
We mark with breves or macrons and they aren’t marked that way in the guide.
Mark what we think is a silent E but it isn’t marked in the guide.
Mark as a vowel but was actually supposed to be a vowel blend

Among other mistakes.
She’s 8, we are doing spelling 2. We didn’t do spelling 1, should we go back and do that curriculum as well?

She does not miss words on spelling tests

[Michelle T]

Re: Colorful words help.

If she is getting all the words correct on the test, don’t go back a level. I would, however, work word by word with her on the colorful words. After she has written the list initially, have her look for the vowel or vowel team in each word. So you would ask her what is the vowel in the first word, if correct, go to the next word. If not correct explain why. Then if she misses a similar vowel or vowel team in a later word, have her recall the previous word and why that is the vowel. Folllow the same procedure then for marking the vowels. It may be helpful to have a short and long vowel review just prior to marking with a breve or macron activity.

Colorful words takes a while to get the hang of. I suggest working alongside your child with explanations as to why words are marked the way they are.

Blessings,
Michelle T

[Michael]

Re: Colorful words help.

We mark with breves or macrons and they aren’t marked that way in the guide.
Mark what we think is a silent E but it isn’t marked in the guide.
Mark as a vowel but was actually supposed to be a vowel blend

Adding to what Michelle wrote: If you'd like to post a few specific words, we'd be happy to explain why we marked them the way we did. It's also possible you found a typo, and if so, we want to know so we can fix it!

[enbateau]

Re: Colorful words help.

We're doing TS2 as well, and coming from a different phonics curriculum, it was a short but steep learning curve to identify single silent e. For instance, TS pairs silent e with L to make the consonant team LE that says /uhl/ or the lazy schwa plus L sound. In our prior curriculum, we would have double underlined the silent e and repeated the rule that every syllable has to have a written vowel. In TS, this is its own multi-letter phonogram or consonant team. It's also a bit confusing when lazy schwa vowels aren't red because they don't make the short or long sound, and broad vowel sounds seem to be almost completely unmarked (I will have to double check that). AL, EL, LE, EN, AN all appear as consonant teams because of lazy schwa vowels.

Another difference we're still getting used to is OUGH being taught separately as ou and gh. I believe Classical Phonics gives OU the sounds of short u and /ow/. GH is either /f/ or silent. My 2nd grader learned 5 sounds of OU and 6 sounds of OUGH. AUGH is taught as /aw-af/. When she has to do colorful letters with these words (and they're just barely appearing in Lesson 11), I tell her to do it as the book teaches. It frustrates her, but I let her look at the flashcards I created on sentence strips from the back of the book.

All of that to say, we don't see anything wrong with the approach. It's just different and new to us. I think you'll find, as we did, that doing colorful letters gets exponentially easier each time it's done. Don't go back a grade level to TS1. Just keep plugging along.

[Michelle T]

Re: Colorful words help.

I’m sorry to hear you had some trouble transitioning to TS. If you look around enough you will find many approaches to teaching Phonics. Cheryl researched them all I think! Her determination to produce a program that allows for mastery yet presents phonograms in as simple a manneras you can, all, while following the Orton-Gillingham path, has been very successful with our students. Coming from an approach that introduces many ways to spell a phonogram to ours will present some initial confusion as you try to adapt. It is wonderful to hear you are persistent with the colorful words and encouraging other moms to keep up the good work too!

Blessings,
Michelle T