Consonants

Soft c and soft g

C says /s/ and g says /j/ when the next letter is e, i or y, which is why city, cent, gem and gym do not start the way cat and got do. It is one of the few English spelling rules that holds almost every time.

Teach it as a rule about the following letter rather than as a list of words. Once a reader checks what comes after the c or g, they can decode words they have never seen.

Patterns and example words

Every word below is from the word list Cody generates from, not a hand-picked sample. The count is how many words in that list carry the pattern.

soft c

4,149 words

place placed places placing since service serviced services

soft g

2,827 words

change changed changes changing large larger largest age

Curricula that teach this

Cody generates material against the scope and sequence you already teach. This skill appears in Cody Curriculum, Custom Pattern Selection, UFLI Inspired.

Make a decodable story for this skill

Cody generates stories, word lists and worksheets constrained to the patterns a student has already been taught, so practice on soft c and soft g does not smuggle in something they have not met yet.