Why Spelliosity?

Pacing Guide – Grade 2

On-going

• Model proper letter formation at all times. 
• Revisit Interesting Words often. Make connections to vocabulary in content areas (e.g., science).
• Keep building the habit of spotting bases in words during every unit (e.g., “What’s the base in centimetre?”).
• Return often to the idea that meaning is the foundation of English spelling.

Fall

• Review the Alphabetic Principle through letter sorts: nasals, phoneme pairs – voiced vs voiceless, vowels vs consonants.
• Build an understanding of phonemes, graphemes, and short vowels.
• Build an understanding of morphemes: bases, affixes.
• Play a lot of Facey to build linguistic vocabulary: phoneme, grapheme, digraph, trigraph, base, prefix, suffix, initial-medial-final positions of graphemes, “default grapheme,” vowel suffix versus consonant suffix, etc.
• Explicit teaching of short vowel patterns: CVC, FLOSZ.
• Introduce marker <e>.
• Practice segmenting each phoneme in a word and representing it with a previously learned grapheme.
• Introduce lesson routines by modelling Spelling on Arm, beginning with FLOSZ Word List A. Use frequent modelling and shared practice.
• Focus on teaching Interesting Words that spark your student’s interest. Mix and match as needed to support their learning. If students re-encounter an Interesting Word in a future lesson, that’s okay – it just means more meaningful practice.
• Model simple word sums: those without suffixing changes. 
• Orally break bases into syllables, expressing each syllable.

Winter

• Explicitly teach the how-to of writing word sums.
• Start lessons: Word List A with a lot of modelling.
• Increase focus on vocabulary and base/affix awareness.
• Explore some Word List B activities orally for exposure.
• Encourage sentence writing using Interesting Words.
• Begin with whole-group instruction using Word List A, followed by small-group instruction for the Word List B group while Word List A students work independently. 

Spring

• Continue with Word List A/B, selecting lessons based on student interest or following the order provided.
• Continue practicing grapheme recognition and spelling strategies.
• Ask students to reflect on how affixes impact the meaning of the words they build.
• Strengthen retention by applying spelling words within writing and content-area instruction.

Pacing guide – Grades 3/4

On-going

• Model proper letter formation at all times.
• Revisit Interesting Words often.
• Make connections to vocabulary in content areas (e.g., science).
• Keep building the habit of spotting bases in words during every unit (e.g., “What’s the base in centimetre?”).
• Return often to the idea that meaning is the foundation of English spelling.

Fall

Ensure your students have a solid grasp of the foundational concepts from the Fall phase of Grade 2.

• Play Facey regularly to strengthen linguistic vocabulary and understanding of how affixes influence the meaning of a base.
• Practice suffixing conventions: doubling, replacing <e>, change <y> to <i>. See Learning Tasks in Teacher Toolkit.
• Introduce lesson routines by modelling how to spell out words by their graphemes (Spelling on Arm or a more discreet action like finger tapping) and morphemes. Begin with FLOSZ Word List B and do a lot of modelling and shared practice.
• Model writing routines with Interesting Words.
• Focus on teaching Interesting Words that spark your student’s interest. Mix and match as needed to support their learning. If students reencounter an Interesting Word in a future lesson, that’s okay – it just means more meaningful practice.
• Model and provide a lot of shared practice on how to use a matrix and write word sums.

Winter

• Continue with lessons.

Spring

• Continue with lessons.