Rule Detective: Find the Rule Letters Inside the Whole Word

Every word is printed in full on this 2nd grade rule detective page, and the child's job is to find the rule inside it. The sheet shown is Magic e, with the same rule box as the base page — the four chips a_e, i_e, o_e, u_e and the models cake and kite — over eight cards in two columns: a scale, a cube, an airplane, a lime, a vase, a rake, a porcupine and a nose, each word spelled out in spaced letters with a small dashed box after it. The child reads the word, circles the rule letters where they sit — the a and the final e of scale, the i and e at the end of porcupine — and copies just those letters into the box.

Reading a rule is not the same as writing one, and this face works on the reading side: a child who can spot that porcupine ends in an i_e pattern is ready to read new words with it, whether or not they can yet spell them. No foil words are mixed in on this face, so every word on the sheet obeys the rule and the hunt is always for where, not whether. Words run to nine letters, and the longer ones are chosen so that the rule letters are not simply the last two.

Print it in the same week as the base spelling rules page for the same rule; the base writes the letters, this one finds them, and the two together cover the rule from both sides. A pencil circle and two or three copied letters per card make it a short sheet. Write-the-word is the harder face, where those same rule letters are the only thing printed.