Step Card for Teaching the Letter C

In my never-ending quest for review activities, today I made up a lesson to review the letter “c”.

My first question for my student is: What do you remember about the letter “c”?

I then want my student to make a step card with the questions that s/he will ask to determine the sound of the “c”.

An example might be:

1. What letter follows the “c”, a consonant or a vowel?

2. If a consonant follows the “c’ it will always say /k/.

3. If the vowels “i” “e” or “y” follow the “c” it will always say /s/.

4. If any other vowel follows the “c” it will always say /k/.

I then made a list of words that have a “c” in the beginning, middle or end of the word. Two of my favorite resources are: Phonics A to Z by Wiley Blevins and Phonics and Spelling Through Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping by Kathryn E. Grace.

Here’s my list:

cell, cutter, cider, cap, cyst, ace, canter, price, coal, fancy, caper, cent, car, cope, dance , brace, camper, trance, voice, cinch, civic , cube, could, citrus, wince , lacy, cone, curl, cute, spruce, cite, corncob, coattails, circa, circle mince , bounce, count

Obviously, this is a student who has learned many orthographic rules and syllable types. I will ask him to do many things with this list of words.

1. Visually scan each word and don’t read it, just tell me how the “c” will sound in that word and why.

2. Read the words for accuracy

3. Spell the words and tell my all the orthographic rules in each word

This lesson can obviously span several days and can be a template for reviewing any orthographic rule.