Wilson 1.3

The board should look like this at the
beginning of step 1.3

We will be starting with Wilson sub-step 1.3.  In this step we will focus on short vowel sounds in closed syllable words i.e. mat, cat, rat, etc. When "making" words students move the tiles over to the other side of the magnetic journal.  In this step, words will have 3 tiles, each tile represents a sound.  Sounds are "tapped" on fingers and then the word is pronounced.  Notice that the vowels are a salmon color, this makes it easy to differentiate vowels from consonants.  In three-sound closed-syllable words the vowel is in the middle of the word.  because "qu" makes a single sound it is on one card. Students are taught that "q" is a chicken letter because it is afraid to go anywhere without its buddy "u." The "u" after the "q" therefore is not considered a vowel, but rather just "q's" buddy.

There are a lot of materials that are needed for a Wilson class, and I thought I would add a bit of an explanation about that so that there is a better understanding of how the system works.  The journal is used to write controlled words and sentences. This year I put the Student Notebook in a report cover to make it less bulky.  I also omitted the pages that the students will not be using this year from their notebooks. The notebooks are used to write notes and keep track of the patterns and rules we are learning is class. The Magnetic Journal is the journal referenced above. The reader is used for dictation, as well as sentence and paragraph reading.  Most of the words in the reader are controlled by the current sub-step.  The words that are not controlled are called "sight words." This is different from FUNdations where they are called "trick words" -same concept, different name.  We also practice writing using whiteboards.