Any tricks for -ir -ur confusion in spelling?

[summerreading]

My dyslexic kiddo is stuck on Nessy. He cannot get past the spelling challenge for -ir and -ur. He is ok with -ar -or and -er. He can read words with r controlled vowels fine. 

He says Nessy doesn't give any tricks for spelling, which it usually does.  We use Apples and Pears for spelling and are at the end of Book A and it doesn't have these words yet. I doesn't look like -ir and -ur are in Book B even. I know it's a bit confusing using 2 programs but Dancing Bears, the reading side of AP, did not work out for us.

Any tips or tricks to share? Thanks!

[forty-two]

The only trick I know is that there are more than twice as many words with -ur than with -ir.  So when in doubt, try -ur first.

[ElizabethB]

1 hour ago, forty-two said:

The only trick I know is that there are more than twice as many words with -ur than with -ir.  So when in doubt, try -ur first.

Right.  Here are the percentages:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics Lsns/Resources/sound letter spell1.pdf

My ABCs and All Their Tricks says there are 114 ir words and 247 ur words in the most common 17,000 words.  Things like this you just have to memorize, there is not real pattern looking at the two types of words.  Maybe practice sorting some of the most common ones?

You can get the entire list from the Hanna study, but the way they sort and classify words takes a while to figure out.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED128835

 

[summerreading]

1 hour ago, forty-two said:

The only trick I know is that there are more than twice as many words with -ur than with -ir.  So when in doubt, try -ur first.

 

44 minutes ago, ElizabethB said:

Right.  Here are the percentages:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics Lsns/Resources/sound letter spell1.pdf

My ABCs and All Their Tricks says there are 114 ir words and 247 ur words in the most common 17,000 words.  Things like this you just have to memorize, there is not real pattern looking at the two types of words.  Maybe practice sorting some of the most common ones?

You can get the entire list from the Hanna study, but the way they sort and classify words takes a while to figure out.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED128835

 

 

 

Thanks both. I'll pass that on to try -ur first. I found that Nessy has some worksheets to go with the program so I'll work on getting more of these words memorized.

[Hallyv]

This isn't really a trick,  but when we come across those ir - ur words, I give a hint and say, "you spell it like the (make the phonics sound as you say it )  /urrrr/  as in hurt or nurse.....and for ir it is the /irrrr/ of bird.  Then it is just a matter of seeing it and using those words over and over like the OP said about memorizing.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Hallyv

[Petrichor]

Her First Nurse Works Early <-- all of the "er" sounds (except for "ure" as in "nature," though that could conceivably be included with "ur")

When introducing a word, I explicitly say "er" like in "nurse" or "er" like in "first" and then just the repetition and reminders.

If there's a specific word that's tripping him up, find ways to associate that word with the letter "i" or "u." Things like drawing a bird with the letter "i" for legs and toes. Or a bunch of purple letter "u"s. A flame, the bottom of which is a "u" shape for the word "burn," Drawing a circle with a bunch of "i"s in the middle of it, or one "i" imagine it spins around and looks like an exclamation point in the circle.

When similar sounding words are tripping my DS up, I find graphic organizers helpful. Having the list of similarly sounding, but differently spelled words separated helped him figure out "ed" vs "d" endings.