Cycle 100

100.1 Letter Combinations

Purpose and Procedure

This task introduces the letter combination ai as in pain.

100.3 Irregulars

Purpose and Procedure

This is the first task in which students write four irregular (non-phonetic) words.

Important Reminders

Students will write each word once, and they should copy it by looking at the word on the screen.

The act of writing these words ensures that students pay close attention to the form of each word, which will help the students recognize and read them with increasing ease.

From now on, both the Irregulars task and the Review task will require students to write. There will no longer be a separate Writing task at the end of each cycle.

100.4 Patterns -VCe

Purpose and Procedure

This is the first task in which students will read CVC and CVCe pattern words (in a serif font) that are NOT minimally different pairs.

This is an added challenge because students cannot simply change the vowel sound to read the next word.

100.5 Word Reading

Purpose and Procedure

This is the first Word Reading task in which students read words in a serif font without reading them in the specialized orthography first.

100.6 Story Reading

Purpose and Procedure

The new passage is the first in which students will need to recognize letter combinations in order to read some words correctly.

For example, the word peered does not have a line (macron) above each e, so students have to remember that, in the ee letter combination, the e's make their long vowel sound. In the word team, the e also does not have a line above it and the a that follows it is a regular size instead of being small (so there is no indication not to read it); again, students will have to recognize that the ea letter combination makes the /ē/ sound.

These letter combinations are underlined to help students identify them in the text, but only for a few cycles. After that, they will no longer be underlined, but other more recently taught combinations will be.