Lesson video

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Hello, I'm Mr. Moss, and I'm really looking forward to teaching you today.

I absolutely adore spelling.

With you today, you need to bring your looking eyes, your listening ears and your thinking brains, as well as that, something to write with and also someone to talk to would be great as well.

I'm really looking forward to teaching you.

Let's get on with today's learning.

Today we're going to be applying spellings, er, ir and ur in familiar words.

These are all common digraphs for the phoneme "er".

The outcome for today's lesson is, I can spell words contain three representations of the "er" phoneme, er, ir and ur.

Here are some really important words for today's learning, our key words.

My turn, your turn, and I need to really hear you saying these back to me.

Syllable, syllable.

Stressed sound, stressed sound.

Unstressed sound, unstressed sound.

Keep an eye for these because they're gonna be really important in today's learning.

A syllable is a single sound or beat in a word that contains a vowel sound.

For example, the word brown.

Brown contains one syllable.

The word better contains two syllables.

I find clapping out can really help.

Bet-ter, you can hear those vowel sounds there, so it has two syllables.

A stressed sound is a sound that we hear very clearly because it's really emphasised when we say it.

An unstressed sound is a sound that is less emphasised, and therefore we hear it less clearly when we say a word.

Remember, keep an eye out or an ear out for these keywords today.

Here's the outline for today's lesson.

Remember, we're applying the spellings "er" spelled E-R, "ir" spelled I-R, and "ur" spelt U-R in some familiar words.

We're going to be spelling some common exception words and we're going to be looking at these three "er" spellings, what we already know about them, and finally we'll be applying these spellings in a sentence.

Let's begin by looking at some common exception words.

Common exception words are those words that do not follow our usual phonics patterns, and therefore you may have heard them referred to as harder or trickier to read or spell words.

Let's have a go at reading the following words.

My turn, your turn.

Have, live, love.

Read these words again to yourself and think what makes them common exception words.

Do they have a naughty letter in anywhere, I wonder? Pause the video, read them and have a think now.

Excellent, I heard some wonderful conversations occurring there.

For me, it's the fact that they all have this V sound at the end, don't they, have, but then they have this naughty E at the end after it, making it potentially look like they should be long vow sounds as perhaps a split diagraph, but they're not they're short vow sounds, aren't they? Love as well, sounds like it might have an ah, ah in it, but it's this O spelling, isn't it, for that ah sound, very strange.

Find the correct spelling of the common exception words we have just read, point to the correct spelling of the word have for me now.

Brilliant the correct answer is this one here.

Remember, has that naughty E at the end.

Point to the correct spelling of the word live for me now.

Brilliant, yeah, it's this one here again with a naughty E.

Have to be careful with this word, though, 'cause sometimes we can also pronounce it live, which would then make slightly more phonetic sense, and the word would then have a different meaning.

This is live as in I live in this city.

Finally, can you please point to the correct spelling of the word of love for me? Fantastic, it's this one here, isn't it? It's that ah, sound, but it's spelled with an O, and then our naughty E at the end as well, brilliant everyone.

So because these are common exception words, a really good strategy we can use to help us store them in our long-term memory is the look, cover, write, check strategy.

And this works like this.

I look at the first word, I'm looking at have here, I then put it into my mind, I then cover it up so I can't see it anymore, I have to remember it.

I then write it in my neatest handwriting and then I look and I check back and see if I spelled it correctly and oh I have.

But I'm not just gonna do it once if I get it right, I'm gonna repeat it again and again to really embed it into my memory.

I'd like you to pause the video now and have a go at writing have, live and love, these three common exception words out again and again using this strategy.

Off you go.

Absolutely fantastic work everybody.

So check, have you managed to spell them correctly? Make you corrections now.

I really love this strategy because it allows you to be independent and it's repetitive.

Onto the next learning cycle.

The three ER spellings spelled ER, IR and UR.

The spellings er, ir and ur, ER, IR and UR are common representations of the "er" phoneme, that "er" sound.

What can you remember about where the spellings are often found in words? Pause the video and have a think now.

Absolutely fantastic, some brilliant conversations going on there.

Excellent, I can say see some great thinking happening.

Our ER spelling of the "er" sound is often found in he end.

Here's an example of that word, teacher.

Our IR spelling is often found in the middle.

Here's an example, girl.

And are our UR spelling of that "er" sound is often also found in the middle.

Here's an example.

Hurt, as in I hurt myself.

Some of the words with the "er" spellings have one syllable and some have two syllables.

Let's have a look at the words that have one syllable.

Her, fern, a fern is a type of plant.

It's a really fascinating plant.

It reproduces not through seeds but through spores.

Let's then have a look at the words that have two syllables with our ER spelling.

Teach-er, lett-er.

When the "er" spelling is a stressed sound, we can hear it clearly as in her, fern, when it's an unstressed sound, so in this instance, coming after another syllable, we can hear it less clearly.

Teach-er see, it doesn't sound quite as clearly as an "er" sound, it sounds more like an "ah" sound, teach-er.

But remember it's still our ER spelling.

Let's have a go doing that of letter.

Lett-er, this is why some people get a bit confused with these spellings sometimes, because it's unstressed at the end, after the first syllable, it's coming as a second syllable.

It's less clear than it's in those single syllable words.

I'd like you to decide whether each word has one or two syllables.

Let's read the words first.

Her, over, under, I find clapping can help me find how many syllables a word has.

Pause the video and work out how many syllables each of these words has.

Brilliant, let's go through and check.

Her, yeah, it's one syllable and the "er" there is a stress sound, isn't it? You can really clearly hear that "er".

Over, two syllables and that "er" is unstressed.

It's a bit less emphasised and a bit less clear than it was in that single syllable word, isn't it? Under, yeah again, two syllables, and the "er" is an unstressed sound.

So I think we can come to the conclusion that if you're in a multi-syllable word, rather than a single syllable word, our "er" sound a less clear.

I'm wondering did you hear the difference in the "er" sound? So let's have a look and see if there are any exceptions to our rules with these spellings.

Let's see if there are any "er", ER spellings that like to come not at the end of a word.

Let's read these words.

Her, over, under, teacher, fern.

Most of them do come at the end, but we have here this fern, which remember is a type of plant, that is an exception.

It doesn't follow the regular pattern that we can see.

Let's have a look at some IR spellings for that "er" sound.

Remember this like to come in the middle, first, stir, bird, third, girl.

Most of 'em tend to be in the middle here.

But I can see here that stir is an exception to the rule because it's coming at the end.

This is quite rare.

And finally, our UR spellings for that "er" sound.

Remember this likes to come in the middle most commonly.

Let's read these words.

Turn, fur, hurt, purple, Thursday.

I can see one that's an exception here.

Can you point to it for me right now? Brilliant, it's this word here, fur.

Like the fur of a bear or an animal fur.

It's an exception.

It's our UR spelling coming at the end.

And most commonly we know, if you hear "er" at the end of a word, it tends to be ER.

But in this instance it's a UR spelling.

I'd like you to match the words to the spelling pattern it uses.

Let's read the words first.

Proper, dirt, purse, never.

Match them now to the correct spelling pattern.

Off you go.

Excellent work everyone.

Proper, I can see it's at the end.

It's our ER.

And I know as well that it's an "er" that's unstressed, isn't it? 'Cause it's the second syllable in the word.

Dirt, I can see as the IR, purse the UR in the middle and never, again that unstressed ER at the end because it's the second syllable, but at the end nonetheless.

For the practise task now, you are going to read this sentence below in your head.

You're then going to whisper the sentence out loud or to a partner.

I want you to really concentrate on those green words.

Are they spelled correctly? If not, how not.

And then you're going to correct the spellings for me.

So right now, read that sentence in your head.

Brilliant, now whisper the sentence out loud to a partner.

I hope the weather will be better on Saturday.

Whisper it now.

Brilliant, and have a look specifically at the green words now, are they spelled correctly, do you think? If not, why not, tell someone around you now.

Fantastic, now I need you to write the correct spellings for those three green words.

Do that for me now.

Brilliant, so here are our spellings.

Let's read through our sentence and double check.

I hope the weather, now that's our "er" sound coming at the end of it, isn't it? And it's unstressed, wea-ther.

So our correct spelling is our ER spelling, will be better again, bet-ter, unstressed at the end.

So it's gonna be our ER spelling, on Saturday, Sat-ur-day, oh, that's coming in the middle of the word, isn't it? So it's gonna be our IR or UR spelling.

So it's this, which is the correct spelling here, Saturday.

Brilliant, make any corrections now.

Onto our final learning cycle today, applying our spellings within sentences.

I'm really looking forward to this part.

We are going to write a couple of sentences containing some of our focus spelling and some of those common exception words, those words that we cannot work out phonetically.

So keep an eye for them.

When we write the whole sentence, we need to do several things at once.

We need to remember the whole sentence.

We need to form letters correctly.

We need to sound out each word.

We need to look out those common exception words.

And of course we need to remember our sentence punctuation.

Capital letters, full stops.

So I'd like you to listen to the sentence now.