Spelling Help

Spelling is an essential skill for success in school and in many professional fields. Dreamcatcher's unique on-to-one teaching method, combined with an efficient, carefully sequenced curriculum will foster strong spelling and writing skills in learners of all ages.

Spelling A

Typical Student: 1st grade to adult learners who have not mastered simple phonemic spelling.
Students will learn:

  • Sound-symbol correspondences
  • Regularly spelled words
  • High frequency irregularly spelled words

Students will leave Spelling A able to use simple phonemic spelling.

Spelling B

Typical Student: 2nd grade to adult learners who have mastered simple phonemic spelling, but have difficulty with words containing patterns that are not universally generalizable or words that are irregularly spelled.
Students will learn:

  • Advanced phonemic spelling strategies
  • High-utility irregular words
  • To integrate spelling skills into related language arts activities, with an emphasis on writing skills

Students will leave Spelling B with expanded knowledge of spelling patterns of regularly spelled sound combinations (such as a-r for the sound /ar/), patterns that are not universally generalizable and irregularly spelled words.

Spelling C

Typical Student: 3rd grade to adult learners who have mastered phonemic spelling, but are not ready for the next level.
Students will learn:

  • Sound-symbol correspondences
  • Morphographic generalizations
  • High frequency irregularly spelled words (i.e. author, several)

Students will leave Spelling C having mastered sound-symbol correspondence and several morphographic rules. Students learn a relatively small number of morphographs, but are able to use these morphographs to spell a large number of words.

Spelling D

Typical Student: 4th grade to adult learners who have mastered basic sound-symbol relationships, but who misspell words ranging in difficulty from hope, friend, runner, and flies to designations and progressively.
Students will learn:

  • A variety of morphographs (prefixes, suffixes, and word bases or roots)
  • A small set of rules for combining morphographs

Students will leave Spelling D able to spell thousands of words, including most words on complete Dolch Word List, and most commonly misspelled high school and college words. These students will also be able to apply morphographic analysis to words not taught in Spelling D.