Understanding these concepts will help you understand the spelling of countless very common early words for children that are typically falsely described as “irregular” or “exceptions”.

I point to this film in conjunction with a model “Inquiry-Led” teaching episode on the spelling of the word <know>. Click the image below for that document which provides a great deal of practical classroom ideas for teaching about

Below that document, see a model of a “sticky-note” reference chart that I often construct in classrooms as part of a lesson in classes from kindergarten and up to introduce children the principle that English spelling is fundamentally about representing meaning. This lesson has the advantage of also teaching about homophones. I’ve also included a Keynote (and PowerPoint) file that teachers have regularly seen me use in classes to introduce this concept. Note that this is not to be used in “presentation” mode. By using it in “edit” mode the user can uncover sets of words at a time and have the class suggest ways to categorize them and talk about them as if this were a Smart Board file.

An inquiry-led investigation of the spelling <know>

Model of a “sticky-note” interactive classroom reference chart

Below: Images from a Lower Elementary Class sorting function and content word homophones. Here hands shoot up to tell me whether I should put the word <buy> under number 1 or 2.

Below: In this image we have finished sorting the homophones I had prepared. Now we are hypothesizing which column should be called “function words” and which should be called “content words.” Regardless of whether the students’ best guess is correct, we can use this gathered data to think about what the words “function” and “content” mean, and start to explore why the words on the left a those funny little words that help make our sentences “work” or “function”. We discuss the fact that the words on the right, they don’t carry a lot of specific meaning in the same way that those in the right do.

Files to download: Download this Keynote file here, or here PowerPoint version here.

Above: See this video of Pete teaching a Grade 1 lesson at a school in Zurich introducing function and content words. Click HERE for a document on this video and others from this same school visit.

Click HERE for an old Real Spelling tutorial film that makes sense of function words and lexical words (also known as “content words”). The screen shot of the beginning of the film is a signal of spellings these concepts help explain.