ABSTRACT
When children can hear that some words rhyme, and can see that words like day, may and stay have letters which stay the same, they are able to use their understanding of onset and rime to help them to spell. You will remember from Chapter 2 that in onset and rime, the rime is the end of the word – the part that rhymes – in day, may and say, i.e. -ay. The onset changes each time. The onset of day is d, the onset of stay is st, etc. When children can see and hear these patterns, they are learning to generalise their knowledge so that they do not have to remember every single word as if it bore no relationship to any other word they can already spell. In the Literacy Strategy this is referred to as spelling by analogy with known words. This skill can be encouraged by practice in looking for a pattern and applying it to words that sound and look the same, in lists of words and dictated sentences.
