Great to see Orlando completed most of the homework over 4 days. He said the word slowly as he wrote it-great! Good at thinking of mnemonics. Phonemic analysis- good, can hear sounds in words. Orlando's spelling knowledge is patchy- he scored more highly on more difficult words, uses some rules sometimes and neglects to use them at other times. This means he needs consolidation, practice and confidence and doesn't need to start from scratch.

Orlando was reminded of what he knows eg he knows the 'tion' ending and used it when reminded that he knows how to write that sound/morpheme. Common letter patterns: y -> i +es. double letters, 'dge', ous, ound, ure, drop the final e before adding ing, ( not yet consolidated) kn_, and words with double endings eg en + ed as in frightened, and_ful words. Obsevation: Orlando would benefit from an assessment by a behavioural optometrist to check his vision as one eye sees a word differently ("seems further away") than the other eye.

Discussion on goal setting, the sense of achievement when overcoming a challenge. Orlando is taking much more care with his work.

Working on words for 10 - 15 minutes a few days mid week to build up long term visual memory and muscle memory of words learned and to consolidate and build automaticity. Gave a list of 45 words. Goal is to learn 20 words in three weeks.

Completed homework- contractions. Handwriting improving every week. Focussing on letters on the line and tall letters looking tall. Initiated conversation about goals and the questionable need for learning spelling rules. Orlando said there are too many rules but it's easy to remember how to spell words I've learned.

Isolating consonant blends eg 'glass' has 4 sounds, eg need to isolate the g + l. Develop the habit of cross checking his attempts by saying the word slowly to see that each sound is represented by a symbol. Set up an "I Can...." page of skills learned in our lessons. Copying accurately.

Recall of words. Identifying the number of syllables in a word-up to 5. Identifying base words. Writing on the line. Writing with correct proportions of letters. Spelling contractions. Isolating compound words. Phonemic Awareness-Orlando could hear all the sounds in words.

The Brann Spelling Analysis indicates Orlando needs to learn common letter strings/rules: the double letter rule, phy, i-e, ci, _le, _all_, tion, _y, and how to check his spelling-or how to write at a pace where his hand is 'controlled by his mind,' thereby avoiding the need for self corrections. Writing using upper and lower case consistently and appropriately eg for headings. Errors with : i/I.