Is there a rule for ch spelling /k/?

Yesterday morning I received an email from a teacher asking me if there was a rule for when ch spells the /k/ sound.

As you dive into the fun world of understanding words, their spellings, and all the nerdy geeky things about language, it's easy to get sucked into the minutiae of it all. What I have had to challenge myself in, as someone who easily loves trivial details, is to remember the larger purpose this knowledge serves.

The reason it is important for me to understand our language, and how it is represented in print, is to help students learn how to read and spell, so that they can learn and share their ideas with the world. This is my mission and what makes my heart beat quicker. However, in order to do this, I need to judiciously decide what will give my students enough knowledge to be successful, and what will create cognitive overload and the learning I want to create, is stifled instead.

So, what about this spelling pattern of ch representing /k/? How do I help my students master decoding and spelling with this grapheme (a letter or letter pattern representing one sound)? I prefer the approach taken by Anita Archer in her intervention program for multisyllabic decoding Rewards, where students are taught not the “rules” alone, but rather the first approach is to teach them the different sounds certain spellings can represent, and then have the students flex between the two sounds until they land on a word that is in their oral vocabulary. What does that look like? Well, imagine the following:

Have the kid try to sound out the word with the typical /ch/ sound that they are more familiar with... Let's use the word "echo" as our example.  As they sound out the word e-ch-o - (etch-o)... ask them if they know a word pronounced that way... hopefully they say no, or you can redirect them to what real word they may actually be thinking of, but definitely not "etch-o".    

Then ask them if they know what else ch can spell... and if they don't, tell them it can spell /k/.  Have them then try sounding out the word using /k/ for the ch spelling.  Hopefully they are familiar with "echo" and if not, teach them!  

You can then share with them that you have discovered a clue about the history of that word, and that because ch is spelling /k/, you know it's of Greek origin.  

Now, let's say it’s a different context, and a kiddo needs to spell the word echo... have them segment the word, and tell you how many sounds they're going to need to represent.  Then have them write what they predict will spell those sounds.   If they write it as ecko, you can then ask them if that looks right (if they've mapped the word to their brain for automatic retrieval for reading, they'll probably be able to recognize that this does NOT look right).  From there you may have to teach them another spelling, that ch can spell /k/, and if the ck that they chose doesn't look right, they can try using ch, and evaluate.  

As the "rule" for these spellings, I'm not sure I've come across one, (Denise Eide shares on her site Logic of English, that there is no rule for this spelling, which makes me feel better that I’ve arrived at the same place as she did!) the best I can surmise is that it has to do with recognizing if it's from Greek origin for the ch spelling of /k/... but how does a kid know that? How can we, as proficient readers, even be sure, other than we've mapped these words, recognize the pronunciation, and then can determine that it's Greek? These are the questions I’m still asking.

Two things come to mind as implications for helping students: that the word recognition is connected to the language comprehension. Having the student flex between pronouncing etch-o and echo, will only be effective IF the student has the word echo as part of their working vocabulary. They also will only be able to flex between those two sounds IF the student knows that ch can spell two different sounds (/ch/ like in chicken, and /k/ like in choir). For the spelling, this is where I see how sound walls can play a huge role in helping students identify how they can represent different phonemes. For the decoding, I see how important vocabulary plays not only in understanding what the word means, but making sure that the student has this word readily available to link spellings so they know what word it is they just sounded out.

There are more questions like this, of trying to find the patterns and rules that govern our language and systems for communicating, but what I hope you take away is the importance of helping students know different spelling patterns, and how to flex between the sounds those spellings can represent. However, just decoding isn’t enough, they will only ever know the correct pronunciation if they have that word in their working vocabulary. We must teach students the code. We must teach students meaning.

And it’s through both of these elements we will best be able to help our students achieve what they need, to know how to read, and how to write.