Next Steps

One of my first posts for this blog was called "Starting Points," detailing my recommendations for five core concepts around which to build initial instruction. The content from that post can be used to plan learning for the better part of a year or more, depending on the frequency and duration of sessions and the student(s) involved.

This post is the follow-up. Once those foundational concepts are established and practiced, where can we go next?

Here are five intermediate language study concepts that can be investigated with students, within the LEX framework of word~family~system. I'm not offering these foundations as a scope and sequence; they don't have to be done in any particular order. They are simple areas of investigation and clarification that can be studied to move toward an ever-clearer understanding of how the system works – and how it doesn't. In a third post some months from now, I will detail five areas for advanced orthographic study. But if you and your kiddos have a firm grasp on the content from the earlier post, well, forge ahead.

Remember, it's not written in stone. You can always explore an intermediate concept before you've finished or firmly established all of the initial ones. You know your students best, and you know where they've been and where they're going. These posts are guidelines, roadmaps, not requirements or laws.

And no one else will tell you this about how to study English orthography. Not anywhere, not ever, not at all.