Stuck in the Mud: Learn 6 Ways to Spell the Short U Sound (Spelling the Short and Long Vowel Sounds)

Learn to spell naturally with stories! This engaging phonics story brings spelling to life and is full of Short U sound words, providing authentic context to make sense of phonics. Read about the adventures of Doug and his brother as they build a clubhouse by the creek, and enjoy learning to spell 6 was to spell Short U sound at the same time!

The story includes 114 Short U words plus spelling and story based learning activities, word list and spelling groups, tricky words, reading comprehension, homophones, homonyms and homographs and a grapheme chart. The Short U sound letters are printed in green making it easy to 'sound out' words.

Clever Speller's unique story based learning approach to spelling helps students aged 4-10 to develop phonemic awareness, learn all the ways to spell sounds in words and improve grammar.

Easily Learn to Spell with Clever Speller Phonics Stories

Stage 1: Develop Phonemic Awareness, the ability to hear sounds in words. Listening to phonics stories full of words with a focus sound makes developing this skill easy and natural.

Stage 2: Learn all the Ways to Spell Sounds in Words with phonics stories full of words showing the different ways to spell a focus sound.

Stage 3: Perfecting Grammar, story based activities make learning to clearly communicate meaningful and connected

Clever Speller Phonics Stories Make Phonics Easy

• Read the phonics story 'Stuck in the Mud' and listen for words with a Short U sound
• Break words into sounds, eg s-u-n. This is often called 'sounding out'
• Spell the Short U sound words by saying each individual sound of the word and then the whole word, eg s-u-n, sun
• Learn all the ways to spell the Short U sound in words

Helping Students to Enjoy Learning to Spell

For students with Dyslexia and Learning Difficulties:

• spelling is confusing and doesn't make sense
• words seem to run together
• reading is hard work and not fun

This is because of difficulties with:

• hearing sounds in words
• learning letter sound associations
• blending sounds together
• identifying beginning, middle and end sounds in words
• learning tricky sight words
• reading fluency
• retrieving words from vocabulary

How Clever Speller helps:

• phonics stories are full of words with a focus sound
• all the ways to spell the focus sound are in one place
• stories provide the context for phonics to make sense
• easy to follow word family patterns
• focus sound words are grouped in lists from simple to complex
• tricky sight words are grouped into a focus sound
• rhyming stories help with predicting and memory
• recalling spelling is much easier from a story than from a spelling list