2. When to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'

Once students know consonants and short vowel sounds, you can teach them how to decide between 'c' and 'k' when the /k/ sound is followed by a vowel. Start with short vowel sounds. By initially spelling words such as cap and kid, which they can decode with automaticity, students can focus on making spelling decisions.

After teaching blends, you can teach students to decide between 'c' and 'k' when spelling words with blends like clip and mask.

Here is a reminder of where you are on our phonics continuum — what you have taught and what's coming up. This is not the only way to do things, and many programs will teach skills in a different order. That's OK, as long as students learn all of the skills.

Explicitly teaching students when to use 'c' vs. 'k' in spelling comes in at several other points in our phonics continuum as well. As students learn more advanced phonics patterns like magic 'e', vowel teams, and multisyllabic words, they can learn to decide if they need a 'c' or a 'k' in words such as cake, coat, and basket. See the module on Integration with Other Skills to see how to make these explicit connections for students.

We begin teaching students 'c' vs. 'k' with vowels toward the end of kindergarten. There are a lot of steps students need to take in order to decide whether to use a 'c' or 'k', so we don't expect this to be mastered when it is first introduced in kindergarten. 

We continue to work on this in first grade, adding in the pattern about spelling /k/ in blends after teaching blends. We keep practicing this in both one-syllable and multisyllabic words as students progress through the grades.

Before learning about whether to spell with 'c' or 'k' when the /k/ is followed by a vowel, students need to be able to:

• Identify consonant sounds and short vowel sounds 
• Read closed syllables

Before learning about whether to spell with 'c' or 'k' in a blend, students need to be able to:

• Identify blends
• Read and spell words with blends