Language Arts Grade Four

Unit One, Lesson One: Letter Patterns

  1. pain
  2. stain
  3. train
  4. rain
  5. drain
  6. hibernation
  7. migration
  8. oxygen
  9. climate
  10. animals
  1. lizards
  2. turtles
  3. snakes
  4. shelter
  5. water
  6. dessert
  7. desert
  8. cactus
  9. mountains
  10. arid
The ai Letter Pattern

This list contains several words with the ai letter pattern. The ai pattern makes the long a sound. Here are some more words with the ai letter pattern: 


     Maine		brain		strain
     
     main		grain		plain

     bait		gait		paid

     afraid		pail		nail
Another letter pattern which appears in this list more than once is the tion letter pattern. When you pronounce the tion letter pattern it sounds like shun. Here are a few more words with the tion letter pattern. 

      vacation		function	fraction

      nation		creation	dehydration
Alphabetizing A List of Words

You are expected at this point to be able to alphabetize a list of words and so before you actually have to do this in an activity we will quickly review how to alphabetize a list of words. Some people say that the list should be put into ABC order which means the same as alphabetizing the list.

Inspect this list of words: 


   pain
   brain
   drain
   train
   grain
   stain
In order to alphabetize these words (put them in ABC order) you must compare the first letter of each word. A quick inspection of the list tells you that the word "brain" comes first since no other word in this short list starts with an "a" or "b."

The next word in alphabetical order is "drain." The last word in alphabetical order is "train." So, our alphabetized list would look like this: 


  brain
  drain
  grain
  pain
  stain
  train
Sometimes you have to look past the first letter to figure out alphabetical order. Take a close look at this short list: 


  strain
  stain
  state
All three of these words have st as their first two letters. The first difference comes at the third letter. The words "stain" and "state" both havae an "a" at the third spot and the word "strain" has an "r." Since "r" comes after "a" in the alphabet the word "strain" is the last in alphabetical order. The words "state" and "stain" have the same letters until the fourth letter. The "i" in "stain" comes earlier in the alphabet than the "t" in "state," and so "stain" comes before "state" in alphabetical order. Our list reordered alphabetically becomes: 

  stain
  state
  strain

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