Word study provides students with opportunities to investigate and understand the patterns in words. Knowledge of these patterns means that students needn’t learn to spell one word at a time. Take, for example, the difference between “hard c” (as in cat) and “soft c” (as in cell).

Look at these examples; they have the same patterns but with some sound exceptions: found, pound, round but young eight, weight, weigh but height autumn, August but Australia how, now, cow but blow, know match, batch, hatch but watch soon, moon, tycoon but book, took

Example 1 Pattern: d?g Matches: All words starting with 'd', ending with 'g', a single letter in between. Words: dig, dog, dug Example 2 Pattern: d*ling Matches: All words starting with 'd', ending with 'ling', any letters in between.