Sort by Spelling Rule: Write Each Picture Word in Its Bin

Eight unlabeled pictures and two bins are the whole of this 2nd grade sort-by-spelling-rule page. The sheet shown is c or k: the rule box prints the two letters, a dashed strip beneath it holds the picture bank — a desk, a cardigan, a baker, a donkey, a car, a turkey, a cardinal and a key — and below are two tall bins headed with a c chip and a k chip, five handwriting rules in each. The child says each picture word, decides which letter spells its hard-c sound, and writes the whole word into that bin, one per line. Three words go to one bin and five to the other on this sheet, so the two columns do not fill evenly.

No word is written for the child here, which makes it the most demanding of the family's c-or-k faces: the picture has to be named, the rule applied to the sound, and the whole word spelled into the bin. The uneven three-and-five split is deliberate — a child cannot finish one bin and put the rest in the other — and words like desk and turkey put the k at the end rather than the front, so the sort is by spelling, not by first letter. The pair rules ee-ea and ai-ay print in the same two-bin shape.

The bins take a large hand and the page prints on one sheet. Use it after the which-one page has made the pair familiar and before a dictation. A teacher checking the sheet reads down each bin once; a word in the wrong bin and a word misspelled in the right bin are two different errors.