In this blog post I am going to break down what the floss rule is and how we can teach it explicitly to help our dyslexic and struggling students.

Most adults have learnt to recognise when the spelling of a word ‘looks’ correct, not because they have memorised every word but because their brain has stored away the patterns of our language.  We call this ‘orthographic mapping’ and I have an entire blog post written to explain this process you can read here.

What are spelling generalisations?

Spelling generalisations are specific spelling rules that our English words generally follow.  Teaching these generalisations or what we know as ‘spelling rules’ can help our dyslexic students to become more fluent spellers. One of the first of these rules that we can teach is something called the floss rule.

Once your student knows their letter sounds and short vowel sounds we can teach them the floss rule.  This will help them to be able to spell words with double final consonants.

What is the Floss Rule?

The floss rule is a way to explain why some words have double letters at the end.  Here is a short explanation of the Floss Rule.

If a word has:-

• 1 syllable
• 1 short vowel immediately followed by 
• f, l, s or z

Those final letters need to be doubled.

How do I teach the floss rule effectively?

• Firstly, I don’t ask the students to figure it out by themselves.  The most effective way to teach a spelling rule is with explicit instructions. Explicit teaching is explaining a concept very clearly and with lots of examples. 

• I show my students some words with and without double letters and highlight the short vowel to show them how the double letters need to come right after it.

NB.  Try not to include words that have ‘all’, and if you have accents like we do here in NZ, I also avoid using words with ‘a’ next to a double ‘ss’.  This is because with our accent the ‘a’ says /ar/ in these instances.

• It is important to know this information before you start teaching so that you know what words to use in your teaching of the floss rule.  This is where a great structured literacy resource comes in handy (see below).

• Have a list of words to dictate ready to go. Make sure to use some words that don’t follow the floss rule and then ask your students to tell you before writing it down, whether or not it follows the rule. 

You can use the routine below.

Does this word follow the 1-1-1 rule?

Say the word ‘huff’ out loud then use the questions below to help your student to answer whether this word follows the floss rule.

3 Simple questions to ask:

1. Is this word 1 syllable?

-Say the word together and clap the word to see if it has one syllable.

2. Does this word have 1 short vowel?

-Say the word and focus on the vowel sound to see if it is short.

3. Is the short vowel followed immediately by f,l,s or z? (one final sound)

-Split the word into its sounds and use counters or sound boxes to see if the f,l,s or z comes immediately after the short vowel sound. 

If the answer to all 3 is yes, we double the final letter.  

Some great words to use for this would be those that have a long vowel, those that have another consonant before the end sound, words where the end sound is something different and also, words that follow the floss rule.

Here is a list of words you could use for this exercise:-

• Huff 
• Leaf – does not double because it is a long vowel
• Hill
• Miss
• Desk – does not double because the ‘l’ sound is not on the end
• Mole – does not double because it is a long vowel
• Milk – does not double because the ‘l’ sound is not on the end
• Truck – the target sounds f,l,s or z are not after the short vowel
• Buzz
• House – the s does not double as it does not follow a short vowel

Within the resource pictured below I have word cards that you can use to read and decide whether or not they follow the rule with your student.  Remember to explicitly show your student how the floss rule works before you ever expect them to work it out on their own.  

I always use the rule of ‘I do’, ‘we do’ and then ‘you do’.

A few floss rule exceptions 

There are a few floss rule exceptions which students will need to learn as heart words.  Some of these are abbreviations, foreign words or non-content words.  

bus, yes, gas, gal, quiz, if, chef, this, plus, us

Also, words that finish with an ‘s’ where the ‘s’ sounds like /z/, such as ‘is’, ‘has’, and ‘was’, we do not double the ‘s’.

Ways to practice the floss rule

Word Sorts

As I mentioned above, getting children to sort words that do and do not follow this spelling rule is a great way for them to become more familiar with when to double those final consonants.

You can use this as a partner activity where one student reads the word and then the other partner decides which column this word will go into.

If your student is not up to reading the different words, then you as the teacher or tutor can read out the word card and then go through the 1-1-1 questions together. You could then either paste the words into the correct column or just use tally marks. If the word follows the rule, perhaps you could get your student to have a go writing the word into the ‘double it’ column.

This type of activity can easily be done with a pencil and paper and a simple list of words.

Word Mapping also known as phoneme-grapheme mapping

This activity is a powerful strategy.  Giving students words and show them how to split them up and write one sound per box.  They will soon notice how the double letters always come straight after the short vowel sound.  It also helps them to understand that those double letters will always be making one sound.

Word Dictation

I like to play a game called ‘Do We Match’ that I learnt from a wonderful colleague Michelle Breitenbach from ‘Read to Rewire’.  Here is how this works.

1. I have a whiteboard and my student/s also have a whiteboard.  I will dictate a word and ask my students to split it up into sounds.  
2. We will then go through the 1-1-1 questions I explained previously.  
3. We then write the word down on our whiteboards and once the student is finished they can call out, ‘do we match?’.  
4. We then turn our boards around and see if we match.  

This activity is not only fun but is a great way for students to analyse their own mistakes.  If they have not doubled a letter, I can ask them the question – “What is different between your word and mine?”.  They will more often than not see their mistake and have a big ‘aha’ moment.  The more we do this, I find the less mistakes are made.

Reading using a Floss Rule Decodable Text

Reading and spelling go hand in hand; if we combine the two, our student’s progress greatly increases.  

It has been found that:-

Spelling and reading build and rely on the same mental representation of a word. Knowing the spelling of a word makes the representation of it sturdy and accessible for fluent reading.

Catherine Snow et al. Excerpt from a reading rockets blog post.

I always teach spelling and reading together so once we have practiced a spelling rule and written words with this rule we can read a short floss rule decodable text that contains floss rule words.

Highlighting the floss rule words before reading the passage is also a strategic and purposeful activity.

You can find my floss rule reading passages here:

Games

Games are a great way to consolidate the floss rule.  We will play one for a quick break in a lesson or I will send one home for homework.  Roll and read floss rule words or connect 4 games using floss rule words are a great addition to this learning process.

See some examples below.

In Summary

• The floss rule is one of the simplest spelling rules to learn and can be taught once a student knows their letter sounds and short vowel sounds.

• Teaching the floss rule explicitly is the most effective way to help students understand how and when to use final double consonants.

• Use specific floss rule word lists and make sure to have your word lists ready before the lesson so that you don’t stumble unnecessarily on words that don’t follow the rule.

• Practice, practice, practice!

• Use fun review activities and combine reading and spelling floss rule words to form strong connections in the brain.

• Hopefully, by using the methods and activities in this blog post you can help your students successfully learn the floss rule. 

If you found this blog post helpful, go ahead and pin this to your pinterest boards so that more teachers can find it and let me know below if you found this helpful!

You can find some of the resources mentioned in this blog post below.

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