OnTrack Reading

Note: This page covers specific word lists used in the OnTrack Reading Phonics Curriculum. If you got to this page from a search engine and are just looking for general word lists go to OnTrack Reading Word Lists for word lists organized in several different ways. To get a quick feel for the organization of this site, scan the Table of Contents on the right.

Below are the two lists of 3-syllable words used in the OnTrack Reading Phonics Curriculum. The first list contains 55 words on four pages separated into chunks according to the Main Rule and it’s Three Exceptions. The second contains 90 words on two pages presented as normally appearing words (called the read/chunk/spell list.)

Download the 3-Syllable Chunk-by-Chunk List

Download the 3-Syllable Read/Chunk/Spell List

Using the List of Chunked Words

Again, all of the 3-syllable words are chunked according to the application of the main Rule and the Three Exceptions. As was the case before, direct your child to try the First Vowel Sounds on the first attempt at reading the word unless he already knows the word and reads it accurately.

You should have completed all of the 2-Syllable Chunk-by-Chunk word list before starting this one, but you can still be working on the remaining 2-Syllable Read/Chunk/Spell word list.

When your child moves to the three-syllable level, don’t be surprised if he regresses in strategy and starts guessing again, as well as putting extra sounds into the word or leaving some sounds out. Just as two syllables were more challenging than one, so three is more challenging than two and a lot of the old habits resurface along with the stress produced by the increased challenge.

Incidentally, the three-syllable words are not as hard in some respects as the two-syllable words were because they are more familiar words to younger children. This was intentional, and is designed to give your child a growing sense of competence as he moves to longer words.

As with the two-syllable word lists, the words are presented in order of increasing difficulty. As you move through the lists, your child will encounter more and more words where he has to try a second, or even a third, option before he recognizes the word.

Pay particular attention to the chunked words te-le-phone and e-le-phant. Breaking off the /l/ sound from the /e/ sound preceding it is a bit tricky for many children, but after a few attempts your child will be able to do it.

Time to Learn the Spellings of the /sh/ Sound

The OnTrack Reading Phonics Curriculum does not follow the practice advocated in some curricula of teaching the various endings such as tion and cious as units. It’s inconsistent to spend so much time training a child to concentrate on the spellings of each sound in a word or chunk and then suddenly switch to having him memorize units consisting of several sounds.

Instead, the various spellings of the /sh/ sound are taught. Those spellings are sh in ship and dish, ch in chef, ti in nation, ci in special, si in mansion and ssi in mission.

You should point out that the last four spellings of /sh/ all have the letter i in common, so your child sees that pattern, and that when /sh/ is not at the beginning or end of a word, one of those spellings is almost always used, and that the spelling sh is usually used only at the beginning or end of a word.

In the OnTrack Reading Advanced Code Workbook, you will find a mapping sheet for the /sh/ sound as well as a sheet for practicing finding the various digraphs of the /sh/ sound. As indicated in the workbook instructions, your child should be reasonably comfortable with two-syllable words before mapping the /sh/ sound because by its nature most of the examples are more than one syllable.

In fact, if you take the time to examine the two-syllable word lists again, you’ll see that no complex /sh/ spellings are used in the chunk-by-chunk list at all, and that they don’t show up on the unchunked list until the last column. This, too, is by design.

Next: Decoding 4-Syllable Words, or return to the OnTrack Reading Home Page