Index for The Patterns of English Spelling Volumes 1-10

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Table of Contents

A short history of the AVKO Foundation........................................................4Beliefs shared by most AVKO members........................................................4Origin of The Patterns of English Spelling.....................................................5Other materials developed from The Patterns of English Spelling.................6Using

The Patterns of English Spelling

as a source for homework exercises7Special notations concerning the FORMAT...................................................9Dolch Words.........................................................................................9Difficulty Levels on Scale of 1.00 to 21.00............................................9Spelling Demons.................................................................................10Related families..................................................................................10Homophones......................................................................................10Homographs.......................................................................................10Heteronyms........................................................................................10Word selection.............................................................................................11Censorship...................................................................................................11British Spellings...........................................................................................11Pronunciation...............................................................................................11Definitions....................................................................................................11Grade Levels................................................................................................11Challenging the GIFTED children................................................................11Page numbering of the volumes..................................................................11Questions to be answered by curriculum designers....................................11Index of Basic Phonic Patterns by Vowel Types..........................................12The 214 Easiest Words to Learn in Exact Statistical Order.........................14Roots (Latin & Greek)..................................................................................15Essential Phonic Patterns Rarely Systematically Taught.............................16Using the Alphabetic Index of Words as a teaching tool..............................21Using the Alphabetic Index of Words as a rhyming dictionary.....................22Alphabetic Index of Words .....................................................................23-98Prefixes and Suffixes........................................................Volume 10, p. 1001

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A Short History of the AVKO Foundation

AVKO is a non-profit tax-exempt membership organization founded in 1974.AVKO is subsidized by donations and grants and is open to membership to anyone interested inhelping others learn to read and write.AVKO is run by a board of directors elected by the membership.AVKO’s daily operations are handled by volunteers.AVKO hopes to spread the concept that ordinary adults can be trained in adult communityeducation courses to become successful tutors of their children (or spouses) who havereading/spelling problems.AVKO provides newsletters and economical opportunities for members to pursue individualresearch projects and to take part in large scale cooperative research projects that haveimmediate practical applications.AVKO is attempting to accomplish these goals primarily through the profits generated by the saleof services and special materials developed for the special needs of students, parents, andadults.

Beliefs Shared by Most AVKO Members

1. The natural way of learning is immediate self-correction of mistakes.2. Every child can learn to read at least as well as the child can speak.3. We should use common sense when it comes to following frequency word counts so that we canteach related words together. For example, when we teach the word

nice

we should teach

ice, lice, slice, rice, price, dice, mice

, etc.4. Creating sequences based on frequency counts leads to such nonsense as the following:Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 & upfunny..............funaway...............waynice........................................icepink.......................................ink smile.............................................................miletable..............................................................ableyellow..........................................................yell.................lowstill......................................................................................illblack....................................................................................lack 5. Although there isn’t just one correct way of teaching reading and/or spelling, both teachers andstudents are helped by a systematic approach.

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Origin of

The Patterns of English Spelling

(Earlier editions were called Word Families)

In the fall of 1968 I was teaching reading at Northwestern High School in Flint, Michigan. Myfavorite technique to help students unlock words was by what we now call chunking. For example,if a student couldn’t read the word

advice

, I would have him write the “chunk”

ice

and then keepchanging

ice

to words such as

rice

,

lice

,

slice

,

vice

, and finally the word

advice

.ice iceice riceice priceice liceice sliceice viceice adviceOne day, a student asked me for help on reading the word

technique

. My mind went blank. Icouldn’t think of a single -ique word. Now, I don’t like to be embarrassed. But, I was lucky. I wassaved by the bell ending the class and the school day. I rushed down to see Wilton Slocum, theAssistant Principal for Instruction. I explained to him my problem. I just had to have a book inwhich I could just look up any word family that I needed. Since the concept of word families isancient, there just had to be a reference work that contained them all. He agreed. He also agreed tofind one and purchase it for me. However, he never got the book for me because no such book hadever been written. In the process of complaining about my problem in the teachers’ lounge, one of the teachers said, “McCabe, you’re a linguist. You have a whole summer off. Why don’t you writeone yourself?”You might say that

The Patterns of English Spelling

came about as a result of a combination of ignorance and stubbornness. I was ignorant enough to think that I could do it in a summer’s time. Iwas stubborn enough to keep working at it for almost 30 years. The way I started was by firstcreating a periodic table of English phonograms so I could go about it systematically.I first laid out the fourteen

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vowel phonemes across the top of a sheet of paper using my ownnotation. Then I began laying out all the consonant endings in alphabetical order to form a matrix.

Long Vowels out law Roy cook

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Short VowelsAY EE YH OH OO OW AW OY uu A E I AH U (UH)b

Abe plebe tribe robe tube --- daub --- --- cab web rib rob rub

b

bee

baby Phoebe --- Toby ruby --- --- --- --- cabby Debby Libby Bobby chubby

beebul

table feeble Bible noble ruble --- --- foible --- babble --- dribble bobble bubble

bul

bur

caber --- --- --- goober --- --- --- --- jabber webber --- bobber lubber

bur

Then it was just a matter of filling in the matrix with sample words, making cards, filing cards, adnauseum. But making the map convinced me that English has an amazing regularity in its patterns.

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Linguists do not agree among themselves as to what constitutes a vowel, how many there are, or how best to representthem. So I devised a system I thought most teachers could understand without having to take a course in linguistics.

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We call the four middle vowels the Outlaw Roy Cook vowels for OW AW OY and uu.