Dominique Solia

Ever had a little learner look up from their writing and ask you this? 🤯 It is such a logical question!

Kids notice EVERYTHING, and when they realize that both ‘I’ and ‘a’ can be single-letter words, they naturally wonder why one gets the royal capital treatment while the other stays lowercase. 👑🤝

Here is the quick way to explain it to them:
👑 The word ‘I’ acts as a noun (technically a personal pronoun!). It stands alone and replaces a proper name (YOU!), so it always gets a proud capital letter.

🤝 The word ‘a’ is an article. It’s a team player that strictly hangs out in front of a noun (like a book or a car). Because it’s part of a team, it stays lowercase unless it starts a sentence.

(P.S. In the video, I share that ‘I’ is a noun because it represents a person. For the grammar purists reading along, it is technically a personal pronoun because it replaces your proper name, but when teaching early writers, grouping it with nouns keeps the concept clear and actionable! 🧠)

When we give kids the why behind the rules, reading and writing instantly make more sense! 🧩

👉 Save this reel so you have this quick script handy the next time a little writer asks you “why”! 💾

Your child keeps making this mistake because ‘qu’ represents two sounds - ‘k’ and ‘w’.

Welcome to Part 1 of The Spelling Series for Parents.

Your child’s brain is hearing two distinct sounds, ‘k’ and ‘w’ and putting them on paper. They aren’t bad at spelling; they are just following the sounds!

How to teach/fix it:
Explain that the digraph ‘qu’ represents two sounds: q=k and u=w. So when we hear ‘k’ and ‘w’ sounds together we need to replace it with the digraph ‘qu’.

Use these words when teaching:
•quit
•quest
•quilt
•squid

Save this reel to come back later!

Also, I’ll be sharing more spelling tips, so be sure to follow along if you’d like to help fix your little one’s spelling! ✨

Big words don’t have to mean big guesses!

When readers transition from short words to longer ones, they often panic because they try to swallow the whole word all at once.

By visually showing them the word in its separate syllables, you instantly take the anxiety out of the equation. They start seeing small, manageable pieces they already know to read.

As you saw at the end of the video, this syllable skill isn’t just for two syllable words. Once your reader gets used to seeing words in chunks, you can scale this exact strategy up to three, four and five syllables!

📌 Save this reel to try during your next reading session!

Do you know any more words?

I bet you didn’t realise that ‘between’ is one of them! It literally means ‘by two.’ Mind. Blown. 🤯

Have you ever wondered why we have that silent ‘w’ in the word TWO? If you’re just telling your students or child to “memorise it because it’s weird,” you’re missing out on a major lightbulb moment.

History time.

Centuries ago, we actually used to pronounce that ‘w’! It sounded more like “t-wah.” While our tongues got lazy and dropped the sound, our spelling kept the letter to show that the word is part of a “family.”

Is it just mine? 🫠

Please tell me I’m not the only one out there.

Do I use a ‘ck’ or a ‘k’? 🙅🏼‍♀️

Use ‘ck’: If the word has a short vowel right before the /k/ sound (like in back, sick, or lock).

Use ‘k’: If there is any other sound before it, like a consonant, long vowel or vowel team before it (like in milk, bank, lake or peek).

Think of it this way:

Short vowel? Give it the double-letter “ck” punch! 🥊

Teaching these “why” rules instead of just memorising lists is what builds confident, independent spellers. Try asking your learner: “What was the vowel sound you heard?”

Stop counting letters, start counting sounds! 👂

Ever wonder why “chain” has five letters but only three sounds? If your little learner is struggling with spelling, it’s usually because they’re trying to memorise the alphabet instead of hearing the “chunks.”

Let’s break it down together:

🍎 ch (The digraph)

🍐 ai (The vowel team)

🍋 n (The final sound)

⛓️ ch — ai — n

Breaking words into these “sound chunks” (phonemes) is key to confident reading and spelling. Try this with your child today and see how much faster it clicks!

Looking for more simple ways to support literacy at home? Save this post for your next practice session!

It’s not a “rule-breaker,” it’s just a Heart Word! 🤯

We’ve been told for decades that the word “SAID” is just a tricky word students have to memorise. But for a struggling reader, “just memorise it” is a recipe for frustration.

When we use Orthographic Mapping, we show them that:
✅ The /s/ is regular.
✅ The /d/ is regular.
❤️ The ‘ai’ is the ONLY part they need to learn by heart!

By teaching students to “map” the sounds to the letters, we move the word from temporary memory to permanent storage. 🧠✨

Did you learn this as a “sight word” or a “mapped word”? Let me know below! 👇