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Morphology Home / Matrix Home

Welcome

Welcome to the main information page for Mini Matrix-Maker.

We aim to provide a simple low-cost web-based tool for creating word matrices, similar to the one below. For the moment, the current version is free.

Visit our Morphology Home page for other useful tools, which can help you improve your matrices.

Run Mini Matrix-Maker (free version)

Click the link below to run the program.

www.neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/matrix/run.html?version=temp

You may wish to add a bookmark to this link.

Please read the current terms and conditions before running it. They may be updated periodically.

Free Usage

We may charge for using the Mini Matrix-Maker in future, but for the moment usage is free. The most likely next step will be to include a voluntary donation box to help keep this web-site active.

Using Mini Matrix-Maker now doesn't commit you to any future involvement.

Example Matrix

View a sample Matrix Results Page, built from word sums around the base element <mode>.

What is Mini Matrix-Maker?

Mini Matrix-Maker will automatically build a word matrix for you from the set of word sums in your word family.

Normally, deciding how to organise your word matrix can be hard to get right and even one small change to your word sums can make a big difference in how the matrix looks.

Mini Matrix-Maker makes life easy for you, because all you have to do is concentrate on the word sums. From there, building an accurate, attractive matrix is all done for you.

How do you use a Word Matrix?

Word matrices are powerful tools for exploring and testing knowledge of word structure. They provide a graphical shorthand for illustrating families of interrelated words.

Word matrices read from left to right.

From them, you make single, complete words.

You may use one element from a column at a time.

You don't have to take an element from every column of a matrix - but you must not "leapfrog" over a column.

How does Mini Matrix-Maker compare with Word Microscope?

The Word Microscope program can more actively guide you in creating word sums and matrices. It recognises prefixes, bases, connecting vowels and suffixes, and includes checks and reference tools. You can also easily save and retrieve your work, or print a customised findings log.

Learn more by reading the quick comparison between Word Microscope and the Mini Matrix-Maker.

There is a Word Microscope download for Microsoft Windows, which can be used for free for a limited period.

Word matrices originated within Real Spelling. Visit the Real Spellers web-site to discover more about Real Spelling concepts and the role of matrices in understanding English orthography.

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Welcome to the main information page for Mini Matrix-Maker.

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Structured Literacy | Pride Reading Program

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Every lesson in Orton-Gillingham is organized around a consistent set of strategies, activities, and patterns. The student always knows what to expect throughout each lesson.

Students easily transition from activity to activity since they are familiar with the routine and this creates an anxiety free environment for both the student and the teacher.

Sequential

Each skill is taught in a logical order or sequence. The student starts out learning simple word patterns (CVC) and then progresses gradually step by step to more difficult and complex ideas including vowel patterns, multisyllabic words, spelling rules, affixes, and morphemes.

Because all the teaching skills are taught from the ground up, the student will never have any reading or spelling gaps in Orton-Gillingham.

Cumulative

Each Orton-Gillingham lesson builds upon itself. The student is taught a skill and doesn't progress to the next skill until the current lesson is mastered. As students learn new material, they continue to review old material until it is stored in the student's long term memory.

The teacher is at the center of instruction in an Orton-Gillingham lesson. The instructor teaches the student exactly what they need and never assumes or guesses what the student already knows. Orton-Gillingham uses a lot of continuous student-teacher interaction in each lesson.

Multisensory

In an Orton-Gillingham lesson, the teacher uses the student's sensory pathways: auditory, visual, and tactile.

When learning the vowel 'a' for example, the student might first look at a picture of an APPLE, then close their eyes and listen to the sound, then trace the letter in the air while speaking aloud. This combination of listening, looking, and moving around creates a lasting impression for the student.

Systematic Phonics

Orton-Gillingham includes systematic phonics, beginning with the alphabetic principles in the initial stages of reading development and advancing to more complex principles as the students progress. Students learn that words are made up of individual speech sounds, and the letters of written words graphically represent each of these speech sounds.

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What is Orton-Gillingham? - Structured Literacy | Pride Reading Program

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Here is everything you need to know about the Orton-Gillingham Approach to reading including benefits, how it works and what it is.

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In all honesty, the life lessons I remember most deeply originate with mistakes.

Try to watch a fun movie? I turn the movie on by 10 p.m. and promptly fall asleep.

Try to eat healthy? I inevitably leave the house forgetting my packed lunch, accidently ending up at The Cheesecake Factory.

Plan to be on time for an important event? Neglect to switch my favorite outfit out of the washer and into the dryer.

Although these may not sound like life-shattering mistakes, here's one that was:

On a particularly difficult school day, one my favorite students (all my students were my favorites, by the way), ran into the classroom, shouting:

"Mrs. Tolman, I am so fustated!"

To which I calmly replied:

"Chris, the word is frustrated."

"That's what I SAID: FUSTATED!" Chris shrieked.

Oops! So much for my stellar teaching skills. It was obvious I was adding to his "fustation."

Teacher knowledge is key: We can't teach what we don't know.
To better help Chris, and get him "unfustated," I needed the invaluable information gleaned from years of scientific research. For example, how do our brains store individual speech sounds (phonemes)? Why do some students mispronounce, misread, and/or misspell words? What could I do instructionally to improve Chris' skills? Here's what I've come to understand:

Listening to a student's speech is a window into their understanding of phonemes.
We store speech sounds by place and manner of articulation. This means that "how" we physically make sounds matters. The word " place" refers to whether a sound is made toward the front, middle, or back of our mouth, considering where we put our tongue when we say a sound. The " manner " refers to what happens with your air flow and voicing; some sounds are produced with a lengthy breath of air (/sh/, /m/). (When you see these slash marks, or virgules, I am referring to sounds, not letters.)

In comparison, some phonemes are produced with a quick burst of air (/b/ /k/); linguists refer to these as "stop" sounds. The term "voicing" refers to what's happening in our throat when we make a sound. As you say /sh/, put your hand flat on your throat. You should feel no vibration.

In comparison, say /m/ while feeling your throat. That's a very different feeling! It was not that Chris could not "see" the letter 'r' in the word frustration as he spoke; rather, he could not accurately hear nor feel the way his mouth was supposed to move to represent that particular sound.

Asking Chris to look at how my mouth puckered when I said the /r/ in isolation, and then in the blends 'fr' and 'tr,' talking about what my lips look like, asking him to make his mouth look like mine, and using a mirror would have helped bring this sound to his conscious awareness. The current push for classroom sound walls instead of word walls, replete with mouth pictures, is an example of how to reinforce and deepen students' awareness of creating and manipulating the 44 English phonemes.

If you cannot say a word, you likely will struggle to read and write it.
When writing a word, strong spellers automatically reference numerous connections to what they already know about that word: how it sounds; what letters are used to represent each sound; what morphemes, or smallest meaningful units, are embedded within the word; what that word means; what part of speech it takes in a sentence; and, how that word is used in speech and writing.

Weak spellers may have difficulty in one or more of these layers of language. In Chris' case, I don't believe he ever used the word "frustration" in his writing, choosing a simpler word to spell, such as "mad" or "upset." Weak spellers, especially those with underlying phonological confusions, often write shorter sentences with simpler words, avoiding words they struggle to spell.

I remember Chris trying to write his address for me one day. He struggled writing "avenue," "avnoo," "avin'...then crossed it all out and wrote: "street."

If Chris were to come upon the word "frustration" in his reading, he'd typically look at its beginning letters, identify the first sound, and guess the rest based on pictures or meanings of nearby words. His reading, overall, was slow, labored, and inaccurate, leading to his "fustation."

That same process of using sounds to anchor spellings is used, in reverse, when we read. Good readers process every letter, space, and punctuation mark, automatically activate the corresponding sounds represented by these letters and letter patterns and use their knowledge of sound-spelling patterns to decode unfamiliar words.

Phonemic awareness is an essential foundational skill for unlocking the alphabetic principle to read words. It follows that weak phonemic awareness negatively impacts a student's ability to readily blend words, leading to weak comprehension; we cannot understand what we cannot read.

Join me in an EDVIEW 360 webinar in May, when I will examine what teachers need to know about phonemic awareness through the lens of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Keep your eye on the EDVIEW 360 page for the exact date and registration link.

Until then, I'll likely turn on a chick flick, enjoy a piece of cheesecake, and promptly fall asleep while my clothes gather mildew in the washer. And you know that "fustation" experience with Chris? Perhaps I should have started by asking him why he was so "fustated." I never did find out.

Carol A. Tolman, Ed.D., has a doctorate in educational psychology and has been a consultant at the state, district, and school levels for more than 15 years. Dr. Tolman also has more than 25 years of experience in public schools and the juvenile justice system, spending 12 years designing and implementing an innovative reading clinic for academically challenged high school students.

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Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing: What Teachers Need to Know About Phonemic Awareness

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Phonemic awareness is an essential foundational skill for unlocking the alphabetic principle to read words. It follows that weak phonemic awareness negatively impacts a student's ability to readily blend words, leading to weak comprehension; we cannot understand what we cannot read.

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Brady, S. (2011). Efficacy of phonics teaching for reading outcomes: Implications from Post-NRP research. In S. Brady, D. Braze, & C. Fowler (Eds.), Explaining individual differences in reading (pp. 69-96), London: Psychology Press.

Denton, C. A., Fletcher, J. M., Taylor, W. P., Barth, A. E., & Vaughn, S. (2014). An experimental evaluation of Guided Reading and explicit interventions for primary-grade students at-risk for reading difficulties. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 7(3), 268-293.

Ehri, L., Nunes, R. S., Stahl, S., & Willows, D. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71, 393-447.

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

McCardle, P., & Chhabra, V. (Eds.). (2004). The voice of evidence in reading research. Baltimore, MD, Paul H. Brookes.

National Early Literacy Panel (NELP). (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child and Human Development.

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can't, and what can be done about it. New York: Basic Books.

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Structured Literacy Instruction: The Basics

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Structured Literacy prepares students to decode words in an explicit and systematic manner. This approach not only helps students with dyslexia, but there is substantial evidence that it is effective for all readers. Get the basics on the six elements of Structured Literacy and how each element is taught.