(bouncy upbeat music) (dog grumbling) - Frisbee!

- Ah, Ms. House, you scared the pen out of my mouth.

- Finally, I got you.

(Frisbee gasping) - Frisbee, what are you doin'?

- I've been writing a letter to my best friend, Cheddar.

She's from across the pond, if you didn't know.

- Oh, Cheddar, she's so sweet.

- Hm-mm, the sweetest mouse I've ever met.

- She really is, so how's it going?

How's your letter going?

- Oh, not great, Ms. House.

- Tell me about it, what's going on?

- Oh, well, I got the gist of it down.

I think I know what I want to say, but, (sighs) I'm just having trouble spelling some words.

- I bet I can help you with that.

(Frisbee gasps) That's kind of what I do, as a teacher, is I help people who need just a little bit of help, right?

- You can help me?

- I can help you, so let's look at your letter, and let's see what I can do to help you, okay?

- Oh, okay, you want me to read it to you?

- Sure.

- Dear Cheddar, what are you doing this summer?

I'm going to summer (groans) I don't know that word.

I'm a bit nervous, but also excited.

We are (groans), that's a hard one, to swim in the (groans) and go (sighs).

Well, (panting) will you be my pen pal while I'm away at camp?

Please write back soon.

Can you help me?

- I certainly can help you.

- Okay.

- I can tell that you know what you want to say, but I think you're just stuck on a few words.

- Oh, that's exactly right.

- Well, the good news is, is that spelling can be tricky sometimes, but we're going to see if we can help.

- Oh, okay.

- All right.

So one trick to spelling that I use, is we're going to break the word down into the phonemes, which is a fancy word for sounds that you hear.

- Okay.

- And then we're going to think about all those spelling rules we've learned, and see if we can figure out how we can correctly spell that word.

- Well, that sounds great.

I'm really good at sounding things out.

- Okay, so let's look at this first sentence where you struggled, okay?

You said, "Dear Cheddar, what are you doing this summer?

"I am going to summer," I bet you're trying to write the word "camp."

- That's exactly right.

- I understand why you're stuck on that.

I know the trick to this, okay?

- Okay.

- So, the word "camp" has a really tricky kind of letter in the middle of it.

And I'm going to go ahead and stick it up here for you.

- Oh, okay.

- So summer camp, if you look at camp, it's spelled C-A-M-P. - Yeah, that's how you spell it.

- Well, the M that's in the middle of that letter is called a nasal letter.

(Frisbee sniffs) - Like my nose?

- Like your nose, and a nasal letter, I always do this, a nasal letter makes a vowel sound a little bit funny.

So if you were trying to write camp, and you were going to sound it out with traditional spelling rules, it would sound like this, kah-aah-mm-pah, "cahmp," do we say "cahmp?"

- No, we do not.

- We don't.

That M is the nasal, and it makes us say that A sound a little bit funny, so that's why it's hard to spell.

- Hm-mm.

- So we spell camp, C-A-M-P. - C-A-M-P. - Got it.

So we got that one down.

- Okay.

- I think we had three more words we were stuck on, okay?

- Oh yeah.

- Then you wrote, "I'm a bit nervous, but also excited," which is great.

- That's very true though.

- I know, summer camp can be one of those things that, it's a little nerve wracking, but it's really exciting.

Then you said we are, huh, to swim in the, huh?

So let's go back to the first huh.

We are, are you trying to say, going?

- (gasping) That's exactly what I was going to say.

Can you read my mind?

- I think we've been together for so many years, Frisbee, I think I can read your mind.

- At least two.

- At least two years.

But in dog years that's like?

- Oh, it's like, oh, oh, I don't even want to think about it.

- A long time.

- Hm-mm.

- It's like half your life.

(Frisbee gasps) So, if we are going to write going, it's a tricky one, because it's got a long vowel sound, and it has the I-N-G chunk at the end of it.

So when you take off that I-N-G, we're just going to take pretend that's not there.

We're just going to spell the word, go.

Guh, oh.

- Guh, oh.

- So, that O, it's called open syllable, and the O says it's long sound.

So, guh, oh, and then we're going to add the -ing, I-N-G.

I like to go -ing, like I'm ringing a bell.

We are going to swim in the?

What do you think they have at summer camp?

It's probably not a pond, it's not a river.

It's a, (Frisbee moaning) - A lake!

- Lake, that's it!

- It's a lake, oh, I got this one.

I've got a great spelling rule for lake.

- [Frisbee] Okay.

- So if you're going to swim in the lake, I hear a long vowel sound in the middle of that.

Luh, ay, keh.

- Luh, ay, keh.

- Yes, this is a syllable that is called a consonant-vowel-magic-E syllable.

- [Frisbee] Ooh.

- And that E on the end of it makes that A say its name.

So we spell it L-A-K-E. All right, one more.

We're going to swim in the lake and go?

- Fishing.

- Fishing!

All right, I'm going to add fishing up here.

It's much like going, it has the -ing on the end of it.

So let's just break apart the word fish, ready?

Fff, ih, sh, fish.

- Fish.

- Good.

S-H has that diagraph at the end, right?

- Hm-mm.

- So we're going to spell it F-I-S-H-I-N-G. And I think that you are going to have an incredible summer at summer camp, a whole summer at camp, right?

- Oh yeah, it's going to be all summer long.

- I guarantee you that Cheddar is going to love being your pen pal, and I cannot wait to see what she writes you back.

- Me too, I'm so excited.

Thanks for all your help, Ms. House.

- Well, I hope you guys find a pen pal this summer, just like Frisbee.

- Hey, we got to get this letter in the mail.

Let's mail it, Frisbee.

(Randi laughing) - [Frisbee] Yeah!

(playful music)