Word work was great with the Ss today. Their interest in dinosaurs lead to a discussion of the spelling of pterodactyl, which lead to a discussion of ‘ptero’ meaning wings, ‘dactyl’ finger. This lead to finding a connecting word-
‘pteropoda’

Not knowing what a ‘pteropda’ Ss began problem solving possibilities. In a previous lesson, we learnt the word ‘pod’ -from the word ‘tripod’-when we were learning about a ‘trigraph’-‘tri’ meaning ‘3’. It was here they learnt ‘pod’ meant foot-Gastropod-a snail.

Ss decided that a ‘pteropoda was a snail that had wings’. We researched to confirm out understandings and watched the most spectacular video of a ‘pteropoda’.

We broke up the word into syllables -for spelling purposes-supporting digit spanning. We segmented the phonemes for each syllable and made spelling choices. -pter.o.dac.tyl. We are OK with the orthography of the <pt> because letters aren’t sounds in our grade-context is a must!

Explicit teaching is required to form a knowledge basis but it must be sustainable to allow for problem solving. Learning should be transferable to other contexts.

Believing that a student is ‘not ready’ to deal with the word ‘pterodactyl’ is possibly a failure to engage a child through their interest.

We added the orthography of <pt>in ‘pterodactyl’ to our /t/ box on the THRASS chart. To prove letters are not ‘silent’, Ss had a ball crossing out all the possible ‘silent letters’-it left us only with ‘single sounds’. Letters are not sounds and context is always required.