Lesson video

Hello and welcome to today's spelling lesson.

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

For today's lesson, you need to bring your looking eyes, your listening ears, and your thinking brains.

It'll also really help if you have something to write on.

As well as that, perhaps having someone to talk to you.

In today's lesson, we're going to be looking at different "ay" spellings, including A-Y, A-I, and A split E.

The outcome for today's lesson is, "I can read and spell words containing the three most common representations of the "ay" phoneme, A-Y, A-I, and A split E." Here are our key words for today, and I'd like you to say these after me.

My turn, your turn.

"Phoneme." Excellent.

"Grapheme." "Digraph." "Split digraph." And "common." Amazing.

Let's have a little chat about these words then.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.

A grapheme is the written letter or group of letters that represent the sound.

A digraph are two letters that represent one sound.

A split digraph is very similar to a digraph, except between the two letters that make the sound comes another letter.

For instance, in the word "make," our "a" and our "e," is the letter "k", making it a split 'ae' digraph.

And finally, the word common.

This word means something which appears regularly.

In particular, we are looking at common "ay" spellings.

So these three spellings appear most regularly in our written and spoken language.

Today's lesson is going to be split into two parts.

In the first part, we're going to be spelling common exception words.

So words that appear regularly but that don't follow our phonics rules.

And in the second part, we are going to be looking at the three "ay" spellings, A-Y, A-I, and then our split digraph, A split E.

Let's get looking at some common exception words.

Let's read the following: "all." Make sure you're saying it back to me.

"All." "Ball." Excellent.

"Call." Brilliant.

These words are common exception words because they appear regularly, but they are harder to spell or trickier to spell.

And you may have heard them referred to as this in the past.

These words do not follow our phonics rules.

You may expect to see an A-W or an A-U, because it's making an "aw" sound, but instead it's spelled A-L-L.

I'm wondering if there's anything else that you've noticed to do with these spellings.

Have a think.

Brilliant.

They all do contain the "all," and they all rhyme.

They all make an "aw" sound, "all," "ball" and "call." From the words that we've just looked at, I'd like you to pick which of these are spelt correctly.

Think about the common exception words we've just looked at.

Point to the correct one for me now.

Excellent.

It is indeed this one.

Have a look at the next column for me.

I'd like you to point to the word that's spelt correctly.

Amazing job.

Yeah, it's "ball" here.

Brilliant.

And our final one.

Point to the word that's spelled correctly for me here.

Incredible.

Absolutely.

It's our top, our first one right here, "call." Amazing job, everybody.

We do have to be careful sometimes though, because alternative spellings can also still be words and these words that are known as, my turn your turn, "homophones." Say that one more time for me: "homophones." Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings.

So the word we're concentrating on here is this common exception word that we've just learned now, called "ball." Let's have a look at it in the first sentence.

"You have the ball first." In this instance, ball is a noun, a thing.

It's the ball itself.

Let's have a look at the second sentence.

"The baby might bawl." In this instance, the word "bawl" is spelt B-A-W-L.

And it's a verb and it means to cry.

We have to be careful and we have to learn these common exception words by sight.

A strategy we can use to help us learn these common exception words is the "look, cover, write, check" strategy.

And I love this strategy for a number of reasons.

The first one, it allows you to be very independent in your learning.

Secondly, it's making connections between both your hands and your brain and your muscle memory.

And it's an excellent opportunity for you to practise your handwriting.

Finally, it's a way of learning through trial and error, through spotting any mistakes that you might make.

I'm gonna show you how this strategy works and then you're going to have a go doing it yourself.

So the first thing we need to do is look.

So let's look at the word "all." Okay, I memorised it.

We then need to cover it up.

I've covered it up.

It's in my brain, and then have a go at writing it.

"All." And then I check back.

Oh, and I was correct.

Making a mistake doesn't matter.

It's actually the way the strategy works.

We can learn from that mistake.

So what I'd like you to do now is I'd like you to have a go at practising the "look, cover, write, check" strategy a number of times for each of these common exception words, "all," "ball," and "call." Have a go at doing this for me now.

Pause the video.

Off you go.

Incredible work, everybody.

I can see some amazing handwriting.

I can see some brilliant spelling.

I can see a few children that need to make some corrections and I can see some children that are clearly working really hard to memorise these common exception words, "all," "ball," and "call." Have a little look through now and check your spellings.

Great job.

Remember a really good independent strategy that you can use to help when learning your spellings, the "look, cover, write, check" strategy.

Excellent work, everyone.

Let's move on to the second part of our lesson now, then, the three "ay" spellings, A-Y, A-I, and our split digraph A split E.

There are other ways of spelling the "ay" sound.

We are just going to look at these three because they are the most common.

And common is one of our key words that we looked at earlier, and it means that they appear most regularly.

Let's read the following words.

My turn, your turn.

And I really need to be able to hear you.

"Pay." "Stay." "Display." "Play." "Playing." I wonder if you can hear the "ay" sound in each of these words.

Let's read some more words.

"Tail." "Snail." "Trails." Like the trails you might ride along on a mountain bike, or the trails you might walk through a forest.

"Rain" and "Rained." I wonder again if you can hear the "ay" sound in each of these words.

Some final words for us to read.

These ones will be a little bit different, so be careful.

Have a look.

See if you can spot the split digraph.

"Cake." "Snake." "Plane." "Planes." Plural there.

And "Pancake." We're now going to have a go at sound buttoning some words.

Sound buttoning can really help us to concentrate on the way the sound we're looking at is spelt.

I'm going to have a go at doing some sound buttoning, and then you're going to have a go at doing some.

So follow me along if you like.

And a really useful thing to do here with sound buttoning is to both dot and also to dash.

Let's have a go at the first one here.

Pa- ay.

"Pay." Nice.

Notice how I dotted and then I can see here, my "ay" digraph.

Let's do the next one.

Da- i- s- pa- l- ay.

"Display." Lovely.

Like a display that you might find in a classroom showing off all of your wonderful work.

I'm going to put up some words now and I'd like you to either point and dash with your fingers and say each of the phonemes as you go.

Or you can write the words down and have a go at sound buttoning them.

Off you go.

Amazing work.

I can see some incredible sound buttoning there.

I can also see people pointing at me and dashing too for the digraphs.

Incredible.

Let's go through and see how you did.

Why don't you point again for me and let's double check.

S- t- ay.

"Stay." Great job.

Pa- l- ay.

"Play" Amazing.

Pa- l- ay- i- ng.

"Playing." Brilliant.

So you can see each of these words has our A-Y spelling for the "ay" sounds.

"Ay," as you may have noticed, is often found at the end of a word.

So you can see here with pay, stay, and play.

Let's have a look at the word playing.

We've added the suffix, I-N-G or "-ing" onto the end.

But the A-Y spelling was still at the end of the root word.

And then there are also some exceptions to this rule.

A word like crayon for instance, does not have the "ay" spelling at the end of the word.

It comes in the middle.

And similarly to our common exception words we've already looked at in this lesson, these are words that we just have to learn by reading and by sight.

Brilliant job.

We're going to now sound button some more words, this time with have a different "ay" spelling, The A-I spelling.

Follow me along again.

I'm gonna do these then you're gonna have a go.

T- ai- l.

"Tail." S- n- ai- l.

"Snail." Brilliant.

I'd like you to have a go.

Either pointing and dashing now to sound button or to write the words down again.

Off you go.

Incredible job.

Again, I can see amazing sound buttoning going on here.

Follow me along again with your fingers and let's see how you got on.

Ta- er- ai- l- s.

"Trails." Er- ai- n.

"Rain." Er- ai- n- da.

"Rained." Be thinking again, where does the "ay" spelling come? The "ay," spelled A-I, is often found in the middle of a word.

So we have a look here, tail, snail, trails, rain, rained.

Rained, again, it's in the middle of the root word.

We've added the suffix -ed onto the end, but the A-I spelling is still in the middle of that root word.

Let's sound button the following words.

This time though, we are dealing with our split digraph.

So this is two letters that make a sound, but it has coming between it another letter.

This means we have to sound button in a particular way.

Rather than doing our digraph underneath, this time we are going to do it over the top.

See how I do this.

C- ai- k.

"Cake." S- n- ai- k.

"Snake." So sound buttoning in this way with your split digraph, can you please have a go now at sound buttoning the words that I'm about to put up.

Off you go.

Excellent job, everyone.

I can see some amazing sound buttoning again.

And here, remember we have our split digraph.

So follow me along, see how you got on.

Follow me along with your fingers, as well.

Pa- l- ai- n.

"Plane." And this is as in a plane that you could fly, an aeroplane.

Pa- l- ai- n- s.

"Planes." And there we've just made plane plural by adding an S.

Many planes or more than one plane.

Pa- ah- n.

"Pan." C- ai- k.

"Cake." "Pancake." Hmm.

Notice the way there that I decided to sound button the first part of that word and the second part and then put them together.

I sometimes find this helps when sounding out words to ensure that I'm spelling them correctly.

The A split E is often found last but one.

And that makes sense doesn't it? Because it's a split digraph so we know it's going to have a consonant between our letters making that "ay" sound.

Cake, snake, plane, planes, pancake.

Pan-cake, as I pointed out earlier, is a compound word, which means it's a word that's made up of two words put together, the words pan and cake.

A cake made in a pan.

Mm, tasty.

Let's have a little check for understanding then.

Can you match the spelling to where they are most commonly found in a word? Have a go at doing this now.

Awesome.

I could really see some children there, thinking, "Okay, yeah.

Our "ay" spelling.

Where's that going to go? Oh, it goes there.

Ooh.

Our A-I and our A split E." Let's see how you got on.

Our "ay" sounds, spelled A-Y, loves to go at the end of a word.

Our "ay" sounds spelled A-I likes to go in the middle, and that leaves our A split E, our split digraph, last but one.

Excellent work, everyone.

Onto our first practise task.

What you're going to do for me is you're going to sound button the letters that make the long "ay" sound in each of the words below, and then write them into the correct column.

And we can see our columns here are labelled A-Y, A-I, and A split E.

I only want you to sound button the letters that make the long "ay" sound here.

You have to be very careful.

Let's have a look at the first one here, "away" in the bottom left.

Ah-way.

Well, it has another A at the start, but that's just the letter "a." It's not making an "ay" sound, it's making an "ah" sound.

So I'm not going to sound button that.

I'm just going sound button my "ay" sound here: Ah-way.

I'm going to then put that away into the "ay" column here.

And I want you to be keeping an eye out as you do this.

Do these spellings follow the rules that we've just looked at or are there any exceptions? Let's do one more.

Let's do a split digraph.

Let's have a look at the word at the bottom down here.

"Grapes." Yeah, I can see my split digraph, A split E with a consonant "p" between them there.

That's going to go into my A split E column.

Okay, I'd like you to now sort and sound button just the "ay" sounds in the rest of these words and put them into the columns.

Off you go.

Incredible work, everybody.

Amazing.

Can see some brilliant sound buttoning, and also see children organising them really neatly into the correct columns.

Let's have a look then.

Did these spellings follow our rules? Well, yes it does look like it doesn't it? We can see our "ay" sounds spelled A-Y coming at the end of the word as we know, our "ay" sounds spelled A-I coming in the middle of the word, other than rainy, which is where we then added on our suffix, but still in the middle of the root word.

And then we can see our A split E coming, okay, last but one.

I wonder if you noticed anything else about these words as well as you went along.

Have a little bit of a think.

I noticed something.

We again here have milkshake in a similar way to pancake.

It's a compound word made up of two words, milk and shake.

Onto our final practise task for this lesson.

We're now going to have a go at our getting to apply the spelling rules that we have generated and looked at today.

I'm going to say some words to you.

I want you to think about where is that "ay" sound coming in the word, and that will then inform you as to which "ay" spelling you are going to use, be it A-Y, A-I, or A split E.

I'd also like you to remember to stretch it, sound it out, count the sounds, write it, and also then look back and check and think, "Hmm, have I used the rules that I've learned today?" The first word that I'd like us to have a go at writing is "birthday." One more time for me, "birthday." I'm going to a birthday party.

So let's stretch it.

"Birthday." B- er- th- da- ay.

B- er- th- da- ay.

Counting five sounds there.

Why don't you have a go at writing that one for me now.

Incredible job.

I'm gonna give us the next three words now.

I'm gonna put them into a sentence for you and I'd like you to have a go at writing the words as well.

Then we're gonna go through all of the correct answers.

The next word is "sailing." My turn your turn.

"Sailing." Brilliant.

Let me hear you say that one more time.

"Sailing." Amazing.

The next word is "bake." My turn, your turn.

"Bake." I'm going to bake a cake.

"Bake." And the final one, D, "train." I took a train to work.

"Train." Excellent.

I'm gonna say those four words one more time and then I'd like you to have a go at writing them.

Birthday.

Sailing.

Bake.

Train.

Okay, write those down for me now.

Incredible work, everybody.

We're gonna go through each of these now.

I can see some amazing spelling going on.

I can see some magical mistakes that people have made and I know they're going to learn from.

Let's have a look.

Here are three ways that I've seen the word "birthday" written down.

Let's have a look at the first one.

"Birfday." B- er- f- da- ay.

"Birfday." Hmm.

I'm not sure it can be that one because it's got a "fa" sound rather than a "th" sound.

My tongue should be touching my teeth when I make that "th" "th" sound, not a "fa." The next one, "birthdai." Hmm.

And number three there, "birthday." Let's think about this.

They both make thematical sense 'cause we know that A-I spelling and the A-Y spelling can make an "ay" sound.

But where did the A-I spelling like to come and where did the A-Y spelling like to come? Absolutely.

It loved to come at the end.

Well done.

Let's look now at B, "sailing" was our word.

Let's have a think about the first one.

S- ay- l- ing.

"Sayling." Let's have a look at the second one, S-ai-l-ing.

"Sailing." And the last one, S-ai-l-ig.

I'm not so sure about that last one.

I'm looking for an sound an "ng" sound, an N-G at the end.

So I think I can rule that one out.

And the next two.

We looked at the previous word "birthday." We know our A-Y sound likes to come at the end of a word.

And our root word here is "sail" with the A-I spelling coming in the middle.

Well done.

Let's look then at C.

C was "bake." Let's have a look at some of the examples I've seen written down.

We've got Ba-ace.

"Bace." Don't think it can be that one.

We got A split E there, but a "c" will make a "s" sound Ba-ah-k-uh.

"Backe." Hmm.

Dunno if it can be that one either.

A C-K usually comes after a short vowel sound.

And our "ay" sound is a long vowel sound.

Let's look then at numbers three and four, the last two here.

Ba-ay-k.

"Bayk." Could be.

Or Ba-ay-k.

"Bake." Well, I know from the rules that you've looked at earlier that "ay" sound spelled A-Y likes to come at the end of the word, and our A split E loves to be last but one, like milkshake.

So it's going to be this one here.

Well done.

And finally, D, "train." Don't think it can be my first one here because that's the "ch" sound at the start, and I think trains should be spelled with a "t." So we can rule that one out.

Be careful with that sound.

I know it sounds like a "ch" train, but it's a "t" "t" "train." Let's have a look at the next three then.

I'm sure you're pointing at me furiously right now.

"It's this one.

It's this one." Absolutely.

It's this one because our "ay" sound, spelled A-I, loves to come in the middle.

We know our A-Y spelling likes to come at the end, and our A split E is last but one.

And in this instance it's A-I.

Really incredible, everybody.

Can see some beautiful handwriting, can see some excellent spellings.

And if you have managed to make any mistakes, make some corrections now and think about what you need to do better next time.

Really well done, everybody.

So to summarise today's learning, we've looked at these spellings and where they go in words and we've practised spelling some words using these patterns.

And the three spellings that we've looked at for the "ay" sound are A-Y, A-I, and A split E.

Incredible learning, everybody.

Really, really looking forward to our next lesson.

And make sure you have a go at the exit quiz to show off everything that you've learned in this lesson.