Tier 3 Intervention
Tier 3 students are those who experience challenges with their literacy development. Generally, these students are taught in a 1-1 or 1-2 teaching ratio. These students are typically slow decoders due to their underlying difficulties. They require the depth and the detail when learning a new teaching point and will often require many more revision activities for their learning to become secure.
A Tier 3 student will greatly benefit from morphological training. It will ease the load on working memory as regularly used affixes become orthographically mapped allowing the student to work on decoding the trickier parts of the word.
Similarly, spelling will become less of a mystery to the struggling student as they learn to encode words by unpacking the morphemes within them.

WORDCRACKER MEMBERSHIP provides access to the Literacy Support Kit resources and a summary of the Playberry™ spelling rules related to suffixing. It also offers guidance and worksheets to introduce and integrate morphology into your intervention program.
Although this summary is directly related to the Literacy Support Kit and PLAYBERRY™ programs, the similarity in scope and sequence between most high-level intervention programs means it is a valuable sequence of important spelling suffixing rules for anybody teaching morphology and spelling.
Designed for tier three students

When we decided to make the Word Cracker as a board with magnets, we had tier three students in mind. We wanted a multisensory resource that would make the teaching of the morphology component of tier three come to life. It worked! We never teach a new prefix, suffix or related spelling rule without taking students to ‘The Cracker’ to write in a base or root or slide a prefix or suffix in and out to make words.
The colour coding of the suffixes (red for vowel suffixes and blue for consonant suffixes) is a way of alerting student(s) to the important differences between vowel suffixes and consonant suffixes. Red is associated with danger! Student(s) in the Playberry™ program learn to be cautious (beware) when adding vowel suffixes to base words because some of the trickiest English spelling rules are to do with the changes that need to be made to base words when adding vowel suffixes; such as the 111 doubling rule, the drop ‘e’ rule or the change ‘y’ to ‘i’ rule.
Word Cracker's genesis is in intervention
The Word Cracker’s roots (no pun intended) are firmly in intervention. However, we wanted all students to be able to benefit from the Word Cracker.
The Word Cracker is a valuable tool for teaching spelling rules that are taught at various teaching points (TPs) in and as a general sequence for tier 3 intervention.
The colour coding of the suffixes (red for vowel suffixes and blue for consonant suffixes) is a way of alerting student(s) to the important differences between vowel suffixes and consonant suffixes. Red is associated with danger! Student(s) in the Playberry™ program learn to be cautious (beware) when adding vowel suffixes to base words because some of the trickiest English spelling rules are to do with the changes that need to be made to bases when adding vowel suffixes; such as the 111 doubling rule, the drop ‘e’ rule or the change ‘y’ to ‘i’ rule.
Tier 3 students typically require multiple exposures to new material. Using the Word Cracker, along with the supplementary materials which are provided, will benefit the student’s retention.
These include:
- Blank Cracker for recording new affixes when they have been introduced
- Blank crackers for spelling practice
- Games for revising Grammar concepts
- Add, Double, Drop, Change chart for spelling rules
- Literacy Support Kit Worksheets for introducing and practising common suffixes
Tier 3 teaching sequence
The Word Cracker has a suggested suffix, prefix and spelling rules sequence with detailed lesson instructions and presets built into the interactive word cracker for each teaching point.
The lesson instructions below are available to members, which means you have more time to focus on teaching and less time on preparation.

Suffix-s
The student(s) are introduced to the consonant suffix: … This page is for members only. If you want to check it out, it’s only $4.99 for

Suffix-es
The student(s) are introduced to the consonant suffix: Suffix ‘es’ is… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out, it’s only

Suffix-less
The student(s) are introduced to the consonant suffix: The suffix ‘le… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out, it’s only

Suffix-y
The student or students are introduced to the vowel suffix: Suffix ‘y… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

Suffix-ness
The student(s) are introduced to the consonant suffix: The consonant … This page is for members only. If you want to check it out, it’s

Suffix-ing
The student or students are introduced to the vowel suffix: • The suf… This page is for members only. If you want to check it

Suffix-ful
The student or students are introduced to the consonant suffix: The s… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

Suffix-er
The student or students are introduced to the vowel suffix: The stude… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

Suffix-ed
The student or students are introduced to the vowel suffix: The suffi… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

Suffix-ly
The student or students are introduced to the consonant suffix: The s… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

VOWEL SUFFIX able ible… AND THE DROP ‘e’ RULE
The student(s) can be introduced to: It is also useful to teach suffix ‘ible’ at this point. NOTE: P… This page is for members only.

Prefix un
The student(s) are introduced to the prefix: The prefix ‘un’ means ‘not or the reversal of’. … This page is for members only. If you want

Prefix re
The student(s) are introduced to the prefix re meaning again or back. … This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

Prefix de
The student(s) are introduced to the prefix de meaning down or under. … This page is for members only. If you want to check it

Prefix ex
The student(s) are introduced to prefix ‘ex’ meaning out of or prior to. … This page is for members only. If you want to check

Prefix post
The student(s) are introduced to the prefix ‘post’ meaning after. STE… This page is for members only. If you want to check it out, it’s only

Prefix trans
The student(s) are introduced to prefix ‘trans’ meaning across or through. … This page is for members only. If you want to check it out,

Prefix sub
The student(s) are introduced to the prefix ‘sub’ meaning under or below. … This page is for members only. If you want to check it
2 Responses
Where doesw the course start as i have just paid for it for a year.?
Hi Sally. You can access the course here: https://wordcracking.xyz/courses/word-cracking-training/. Let me know if you have any issues.