Floss rule activity

Teach your spellers about the FLOSS rule with this free game!

Have you heard of the FLOSS rule? It’s one that we often teach beginning spellers.

The floss rule says that we double the final consonant when three conditions are met:

• The word is one syllable.
• The word has a short vowel.
• The word ends in f, l, s, or z.

It’s called the FLOSS rule because most words that follow this pattern end in f, l, or s.

Examples of words that follow the FLOSS rule:

• gruff
• sniff
• fluff
• cuff
• hill
• doll
• grill
• pill
• bell
• shell
• well
• drill
• grass
• toss
• glass
• cross
• chess
• press
• dress
• fuzz
• fizz
• frizz

There are also a few words that should follow the FLOSS rule, but don’t:

• bus
• egg
• add
• gas

I used this game with my mid-year first grader.

As it turned out, he could spell most of the words in the game without needing to consult the FLOSS rule.

But it was still good thing for him to carefully analyze each word. Let me show you what I mean.

To play, we took turns moving around the board using a die.

When he landed on a picture, he said its name. Then he pulled out his recording sheet.

For each word, he asked himself three questions:

Is it one syllable?

Does it have a short vowel?

Does it end with the f, l, s, or z sound?

If he had three yes’s, the word followed the FLOSS rule and needed a double consonant at the end. If not, it needed only a single consonant.

There are two tricky words built into the game, and they are marked with a star. Bus and egg do not follow the FLOSS rule. If they did, BUS would be spelled buss, and EGG would be spelled eg.

When I landed on bus, this is what I recorded on my answer sheet.

So what do you think? Could this game help your spellers become confident with the FLOSS rule?

Teaching tips

• Teach the FLOSS rule to the whole class in one or more focused lessons before introducing the game.

• Practice using the recording sheet as a class before expecting students to use it on their own during the game. It takes a little practice to get the hang of it.

Get your free Floss Rule Spelling Game!

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