Why Your Students Struggle to Apply Spelling Rules—and What You Can Do About It

Why Your Students Struggle to Apply Spelling Rules—and What You Can Do About It
Support Your Literacy Block with No-Prep Word Sorts

If you’re teaching Year 1 or Year 2, you’ve likely had this moment: a student spells “phone” as fon and proudly hands in their work, convinced they’ve nailed it. Despite your explicit phonics instruction, students still mix up vowel patterns or default to guesswork.

It’s not that they haven’t heard the rule.
It’s that they haven’t had enough practice applying it.

The Problem: Not Transferring What They've Learned 

One of the biggest challenges teachers face is helping students transfer what they’ve learned during phonics instruction into their independent writing and spelling. Without meaningful practice, students may recognize patterns during a lesson but still struggle to apply them correctly in context.

Enter: word sorting and spelling application tasks.

Why Word Sorts Support Spelling Mastery

Word sorts are more than a matching activity—they provide the kind of analytical thinking and pattern recognition students need to become confident spellers. According to the Science of Reading, spelling isn’t just about memorizing—it’s about understanding how sounds map to letters and patterns.

By sorting words into spelling categories (like oa, ow, o_e), students begin to internalize these patterns—and more importantly, they start to use them when they spell on their own.

What Makes This Resource Different

I created Search, Sort & Spell because I wanted a simple, no-prep way to give my students repeated, targeted spelling practice that’s actually grounded in research.

Each pack includes: 

• ✅  Search, Sort and Spell pages with different spelling combinations and word families for each focus sound

• ✅ Opportunities for students to write their sorted words in original sentences

• ✅ Picture dictionary to support independence and vocabulary

• ✅ Answer keys for easy checking or review

• ✅ Black-and-white format to save ink and simplify prep

Each page encourages students to analyze, categorize, and apply what they’ve learned—giving them that crucial bridge between explicit instruction and independent spelling success.

Designed for Real Classrooms

Use it during:

• ✏️ Literacy rotations or word work centers

• ✏️ Early finisher time

• ✏️ Small group intervention or review

• ✏️ Homework for spelling reinforcement

It’s ideal for students who need differentiated spelling practice—the repeated patterns with fresh word lists make it easy to scaffold learning and build confidence throughout the year.

Want to help your students become more confident spellers?
Grab Search, Sort and Spell for CVC and Long Vowels here. 

Or pin this post to your phonics board for later!

Play-Doh storage for Word Work

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Last week one of my teacher aides commented on the way I stored my play-doh for Word Work and thought it would be useful for the prep/kindergarten teachers so I thought I'd share it here too (wow, what a long sentence....). 

Basically, I just separate the homemade play-doh into individual sized portions and plop them in a paint palette. Simple. Stops arguments over who has the most play-doh and if you only put out the one color, it stops that argument too. I've found this a good alternative to the store bought play-doh containers, as my kids never put the lids on properly and the play-doh ended up drying out. 

To store, the kids just put it back in the Ziploc bag, seal it and put it back in the drawer with the play-doh mats (blank sheets of paper that were laminated for a window display last year!). 

-in Word Family Pack

Just a quick post today to show off my new pack - I really like this one! It is 70 pages covering the -in word family. This is about 20 pages more than the -at and -an word families I've already posted, but I'll be updating them soon to include the extras I've included in this pack. 

 

There are 17 Word Word activities in total with a good combination of "print in color and laminate" activities and "just photocopy" worksheets.

I have a few more in the works and then I'll be giving a set away. If you don't want to wait, you can find -in here (20% off at the moment), -at here and -an here. Once I update -at and -in with the 20 extra pages the price will go up slightly so you could grab them now and get the updates for free!

Summer Lovin

Sorry I haven't posted for so long.  I haven't been doing anything special, just really lovin our Summer break. I think I'll need all the R&R because once we go back I'll be stressing. Why? Because we only have 2 DAYS to set up our classrooms. Yep, we all had to hand in our keys before we left and we only get them back on the Monday, 2 days before we have to return to school for teacher days (Wed thru Friday). And the 'planning time', which is always 'get room set-up time' is always just the last hour of the day BUT we are expected to have our rooms 'student ready' on Friday morning as kiddos and their parents drop off their things then. 

Anywho, since I'm not at school I don't have anything really to post about. I did make up these READ things that everyone has now. I want to hot glue some thin black ribbon around the outside still.

I've also started making some Word Family packs to work on with my new firsties. I'm making the 'a' word families in pink (so I can mix them up later for review) and the other vowels in a different color.

Each pack has 11 activities and centers and about 50 pages of word family fun! Here's what I've printed and have ready. 

We'll be using magnets to make words in the first pic. The first set of cards students will just need to add the beginning sound or blend. In the second set, students will need to make the whole word. We'll also make flip books and word slides. The color copies I've made up to work on word families during guided reading and I've also included B&W copies for students to make, color and keep for themselves (I've only printed off the B&W flip book). 

The second pic here shows the self-correcting -at Word Family puzzles. The kids are going to love them! The first pic shows just about everything. I've included some flash cards/word wall cards, Roll and Write graph, letters to make words at the pocket chart, a play-doh mat, a word family min-book, a Fill in the Blank cloze worksheet and word search.

I'm working on other packs at the moment. I've got a list a mile long of things I want to work on to save time during the school term but I don't think most of them will happen!

If you're in the southern hemisphere, how is your break going?

Christmas Fry's Sight Words games

I've finished uploading the second and third game in my Christmas themed Fry's sight word phrases board games! They use Fry's sight word phrases Level 1, 2 and 3 (the first 300).

Each game has 4 sets of cards, with 25 cards in each set (100 cards, using 100 sight word phrases). You only need one set per game, so just swap over the cards and you have a new game or print out a game board and a different set of cards for different groups of kids! You can use the cards in their sets or mix and match according to the needs of your students. Easy to differentiate! I like keeping the same board, and just change the cards, so that it looks like everyone is playing the same game, even if they are at a different level. 

The first game, Pack the Sleigh, I've already written about here. In this game, students are trying to be the first player to get from Santa's Workshop to the Sleigh - the first to get there (pack the sleigh) wins! This game uses Fry's 1s 100 sight word phrases.

For the second game, Here Comes Santa, Santa is trying to find his way to the home, filling stockings along the way! This game uses the 2nd 100 phrases.

The third game, Night Before Christmas, has Santa making his way from the chimney to the Christmas tree. It uses the 3rd 100 sight word phrases.

With the 3 games, there are 12 sets of 25 sight word phrases for your kiddos to practise!

BONUS: Each game also comes with cards to use for BANG! type games.

I'm having a 20% off sale running for a couple of days so there's no better time to pick up these games. Don't forget you can also save an extra 10% using code CMS28 on Cyber Monday! If you're like me, you'll be stacking up your shopping cart so it's ready to be put through on Monday!

The games use the awesome graphics from Scrappin Doodles. 

Literacy Activites, Games and Freebies

If you have been reading my posts for a little while now, you'll know that I've been having heaps of trouble uploading new things to TpT and Teachers Notebook. I'm glad to say that half of that problem has now gone! I can upload to TpT with no problems from my school laptop! I WAS able to upload to Teachers Notebook earlier today, but now it isn't - something about undefined error/syntax error - using the same files that loaded successfully to TpT! 

So here are some things I made about a month ago, but couldn't upload. The first three people to comment will get one each! These are all Autumn/Fall themed.

The first two people to comment with their email address will get the first three products for free! Everyone can have the last two - just click on the picture to download them for free from TpT!

Crow Crisis

Studets make their way through the pumpkin patch to scare away the crows. Good news - they are also practising reading (Level 1 and 2 cards) and spelling (Level 3) words with or, ore, oar, air, are and ar spellings/sounds. Easy differentiation!

Parts of Speech Leaf Sort

Students sort nouns, verbs and adjectives onto the correct mat and record on the recording sheet. 

 

 Spin a Suffix - er, est, ly, less

Students choose a card and read it. They then spin the spinner below and add the suffix onto the end of the word. If it makes a real word, they record it on the recording sheet. The first to fill their sheet (4 for each suffix) first wins. An answer card for each suffix (included) can be cut and lamiated and put together with a metal ring for students to check their answers. 

 Freebies available at TpT (I've only bought a TpT licence for freebies by Scrappin Doodles so far). Are we still allowed to post a link to TpT here? If we're not, can you please let me know so I can take this down! Click the picture to grab them!

I had this Making Words activity posted earlier but have just put it up again now that I've bought a Scrappin Doodles licence for TpT.

 Original artwork from Scrappin' Doodles.

Freebie - Planet Hop oi oy words

I hope you have picked up my latest freebie which was posted as part of First Grade Fanatics 14 Days of Summer Giveaway. 

The goal of the game is for students to read oi/oy words and 'planet hop' back to Earth. It has three levels of play and you could even just substitute with your own cards (spelling or math) and you've got another game. Such a versatile board! To grab it, just click on the board. I sometimes put out this game for students to play during Word Work (as part of Daily 5) with cards that focus on the spelling pattern we are learning. It's always a hit and so easy to differentiate.

5x Language Arts Dominoes

I've just uploaded a new Language Arts Dominoes pack to TpT and Teachers Notebook. This pack includes 5 sets of dominoes for language arts - perfect for centers, work stations or rotations. I have used them for Expanding Vocabulary games for the Daily 5 which I sometimes use as part of Word Work for my higher students and during Writing Workshop and for grammar activities.

The dominoes sets you get are:
1. Antonyms
2. Synonyms
3. Homophones
4. Contractions
5. Compound words

I've also included a label to add to a zip-lock bag to store the contractions in or add to the top of a pile and secure with a rubber band.

My class absolutely love dominoes - we have a number of sets for English and Math. What I love about them is that once they know how to play, I only need a minimal introduction for each new set! Saves heaps of time explaining new activities and games!

Here's a screenshop of 2 pages for homophones and contractions: 

Students play just like they do normal dominoes - they match one side of a domino with the matching side of another. 

For a limited time only I've got this pack on sale! Check it out at TpT and Teachers Notebook!

Short and Long Vowel Frog/Circus Dominoes

I have a couple of students who are are needing practise with short/long vowels and blends and digraphs so I've made up these dominoes games. 

You play these games like dominoes - you match one side of the card to the opposite side of another card. For these games, students match words that have the same phonogram/word family - so they are rhyming words. 

First up short vowel CVC  and VCC words (circus theme): 

 

Froggy short vowels with blends and digraphs: 

 

Finally, Beach Froggy long vowel dominoes: 

These games are great because students practise a whole heap of word families as well as review blends, digraphs, short and long vowels! My kiddos love dominoes games so I am always making more! Once they know how to play I can introduce new sets of cards with minimal explanation so I'm not wasting time explaining activities! 

I will also use these cards for spelling practice - students can play the game with a partner and then take turns to read each other a card while the other records the word on mini-whiteboards. A great word work activity for the Daily 5!

You can grab them at my TpT store or Teachers Notebook shop in the one pack.