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📘 Rain is already on the glass

You press your nose to the glass. Rain is streaking down. You already say the word. Rain. Then someone calls from the next room: come and play. Play. Later there is cake. Cake. Say them slowly. Rain. Play. Cake. The middle of each word is t

4
lessons
~20 min
to learn
Adults
level
Start the course →

What you’ll learn

  1. One mouth, three coatsHear that the rain sound can wear three Year 1 coats — ai, ay, and a–e — and see why reading those coats is a narrower job than spelling them.Rain, play, and cake share a mouth. Year 1 uses letter names to tell the coats apart. Seeing a spelling and saying the sound is easier than hearing a sound and picking a coat.
  2. Where the team sitsRead ai inside a word, ay at the end, and the silent final e that turns home and cake into long-vowel words, then meet ie on pie.Train keeps ai inside. Play hangs ay at the end. Home and cake keep a silent e that changes the vowel. Pie wears ie for the same mouth as like.
  3. The cousins next doorRead the see family (ee, ea), the night team igh, and the boat/snow pair oa and ow as more coats for mouths already known.Tree is ee. Sea is ea, and see/sea share a mouth. Night is three letters, one sound. Boat sits in the middle; snow can sit at the end.
  4. Two words, one mouthfulRead Year 2 homophones as the special case of one mouth and two jobs, then use four moves to read a new vowel team in a book tonight.Be/bee, night/knight, meet/meat, sun/son. The sentence and the picture choose the coat. Tonight hunt two rhyming words that do not look the same.

Questions this course answers

England's Year 1 writing list says you should use letter names to do what?

The statutory Year 1 line is exact: using letter names to distinguish between alternative spellings of the same sound. The sound is one thing. The coats have names.

Match each word to the coat it wears for the rain sound

Appendix 1: ai in rain, wait, train, paid. Ay at the end: day, play, say. A–e: made, came, same, take, safe. Cake is the silent-e coat.

Put the four moves through a new vowel team in the order this course used

Spot the team, try its usual sound, check the sentence — especially if two coats share a mouth — then keep reading. The story does not stop for a spelling lesson.

Appendix 1's end-of-word rule, in the course's words.

Appendix 1: ay and oy are used for those sounds at the end of words and at the end of syllables. Day, play, say, way, stay.

How many coats does Appendix 1 give Year 1 for the rain sound in rain, play, and cake?

Three coats: ai, ay, and a–e. Rain, play, cake. That is the first family this course hung on the peg.

In your own words, why is reading a word like rain easier than spelling it?

The national curriculum: phoneme-grapheme correspondences (spelling) are more variable than grapheme-phoneme correspondences (reading). Appendix 1: most people read words more accurately than they spell them.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • Department for Education (England), National curriculum in England: English programmes of study — Year 1 Writing, transcription: using letter names to distinguish between alternative spellings of the same sound. Year 1 Reading, word reading: respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes (letters or groups of letters) for all 40+ phonemes, including, where applicable, alternative sounds for graphemes. Non-statutory Year 1 spelling note: phoneme-grapheme correspondences (which underpin spelling) are more variable than grapheme-phoneme correspondences (which underpin reading). Year 2 Writing: learning new ways of spelling phonemes for which 1 or more spellings are already known, and learn some words with each spelling, including a few common homophones; distinguishing between homophones and near-homophones. Year 2 non-statutory: variations include different ways of spelling the same sound, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study
  • Department for Education (England), English Appendix 1: Spelling — opening: most people read words more accurately than they spell them; the younger pupils are, the truer this is; once pupils have learnt more than one way of spelling particular sounds, choosing the right letter or letters depends on word-specific knowledge. Year 1 vowel digraphs and trigraphs: ai, oi virtually never used at the end of English words (rain, wait, train, paid, afraid); ay and oy used at the end of words and syllables (day, play, say, way, stay); a–e (made, came, same, take, safe); i–e (five, ride, like, time, side); o–e (home, those, woke, hope, hole); ee (see, tree, green, meet, week); ea /i:/ (sea, dream, meat, each, read); ie /aɪ/ (lie, tie, pie); igh (high, night, light, bright, right); oa very rare at the end of an English word (boat, coat, road, coach, goal); ow /əʊ/ (own, blow, snow, grow, show). Year 2: homophones and near-homophones — it is important to know the difference in meaning; samples there/their/they're, here/hear, quite/quiet, see/sea, bare/bear, one/won, sun/son, to/too/two, be/bee, blue/blew, night/knight. Year 2 kn/gn: the k and g at the beginning of these words was sounded hundreds of years ago, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7ccc06ed915d63cc65ce61/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf
  • Common Core State Standards Initiative, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.3.c — Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3.b — Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3.e — Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences, https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/1/ and https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/2/
  • Dinesh Ramoo, Psychology of Language, §7.1 Writing Systems — LibreTexts. A grapheme is a letter or combination of letters that represent a phoneme. In alphabets the basic correspondence for a grapheme is a phoneme, but not all languages have a transparent connection: Italian and Spanish tend to be transparent while English and French tend not to be so clear. The grapheme <a> varies across apple, father, and gate. §8.1 Reading Models — Dual-route model: the non-lexical route decodes novel words using grapheme-to-phoneme rules. Worked example bright: analysed as four graphemes <B>, <R>, <IGH> and <T>, then read aloud as [braɪt], https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Linguistics/Psychology_of_Language_(Ramoo)/07%3A_Visual_Language/7.01%3A_Writing_Systems and https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Linguistics/Psychology_of_Language_(Ramoo)/08%3A_Reading/8.01%3A_Reading_Models

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