Stage 4

After successfully completing Stage 3, children will be well-prepared to expand their knowledge of the alphabetic code with the 52 lessons in Stage 4 of TICK.

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During this stage, children will encounter a variety of prefixes and suffixes, words containing 'dr/du' and 'tr/tu', as well as the letter 'w' in combinations with 'a,' 'ar,' and 'or'. They will also learn about 'qu' followed by 'a', contractions, and words ending in 'il,' 'el,' and 'al'. Additionally, students will be introduced to common phonemes like 'ou' and 'ow', homophones and homographs, Soft 'c' and 'g', and the schwa sound at the beginning and end of words.

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Throughout Stage 4, the students will master the heart words 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'people', 'friend', 'water', 'one', 'once', 'could', 'should', and 'would'.

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Below is a list of the additional graphemes that will be covered (the grapheme 'o' represents /u/ and /ew/, 'a' as /ar/, and 'i' as /ee/).