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.
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
Look at the pattern
Sound-alike pairs and triples: bole, bowl and boll; nose and knows; mote and moat; told and tolled.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.