Worried about your child’s spelling skills? Your concern might be easier to resolve than you think! One teacher, Penelope Steward, recently let us in on her secret to eliminating spelling errors: teaching Reading Horizons five phonetic skills. When Steward taught these five rules, she found that most of her students’ spelling errors were eliminated.

Here is a brief overview of these five skills from Reading Horizons method:

• Phonetic Skill #1: When there is one guardian consonant (and nothing more) that follows the vowel, the vowel will be short.
• Phonetic Skill #2: When the vowel is followed by two guardian consonants and nothing more, the vowel will be short.
• Phonetic Skill #3: When a vowel stands alone, it will be long.
• Phonetic Skill #4: Silent E makes the first vowel long.
• Phonetic Skill #5: When vowels are adjacent, the second vowel is silent, and the first vowel is long.

Luckily, these five skills are all taught in the set of sample skills we offer everyone as a free sample of our interactive reading program.

Use our free sample skills to help your child improve his spelling skills! ›