McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling-Book, Revised Edition · Lesson 68 · Part 4: Sound-alikes, accent and dictation

68. More homophones

Goal: Your child tells the paired words apart by meaning and writes the right one when given a meaning.

⏱ About 15 minutes · 6 steps

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You'll need

  • The book page for this lesson
  • A slate, small whiteboard, or paper and pencil

What's in the book

Pairs of sound-alike words with their meanings (no heading).

The lesson, step by step

  1. Look at the pattern

    Sound-alike pairs and triples: bole, bowl and boll; nose and knows; mote and moat; told and tolled.

  2. Read the pairs and their meanings

    Open the book. Read each word with its meaning aloud together. Some of the pairs:

    bole, bowl, boll

    nose, knows

    mote, moat

    told, tolled

    For each pair, ask: which one means this? Your child points to it.

  3. Spell each pair aloud

    Your child spells both words of a pair, one after the other, and says how they differ (a silent letter, a different vowel spelling).

  4. Write the word that fits

    Close the book. Read a meaning from the book, or use the word in a short sentence of your own. Your child writes the word that fits that meaning.

    Do eight or ten. Mix up the order so both words of a pair come up.

  5. Check and correct

    Open the book and check each word together, letter by letter. For each mistake, your child looks at the right spelling, says it, spells it aloud, and writes it correctly three times.

    Add any word that was missed to a hard-words list.

  6. Quick review

    Ask three or four words from the hard-words list, or from the last lesson if the list is empty. Words spelled right twice in a row can come off the list.

Afterwards

Tomorrow, before the next lesson, dictate five words from this list again, including any your child missed.

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