For Year Five and Year Six students who are underachieving, you can provide individual remedial help using caregivers, teacher-aides and/or classroom buddies (peer tutors).
Continue to teach your learners essential dictionary skills, and encourage them to use a dictionary regularly.
Teach them study skills and the skill of writing for different purposes. Homonyms occur frequently in English, so teach them these also.
Teach your students the the following either sequentially, or as they arise:
Long vowel sounds: a, e, i, o, u. (Students must hear the difference between long and short.)
oi, ou, long oo, short oo vowel sounds.
ar, ir, or, eer, air vowel sounds.
Silent letters and complex ‘k’ sound.
-le words, root words, prefixes, suffixes.
Schwa (unstressed, neutral) vowel sound.
You can use the Index Of Sounds reference card to find the relevant examples on the right pages in each of our Reading & Spelling Made Simple books.