"I" always comes before "E," except when following "C," or when sounded as "A," as in "Neighbor" and "Weigh."
Notice the word "Alice." Keeping this one word in mind will serve largely to overcome this difficulty. "I" follows all letters except "C," which is followed by "E" as it is in "Alice." To fix in mind the "E" following "C" it will be helpful to show the child the similarity of motion and appearance in writing "C" and "E." Many examples could be given of this "I"-"E" rule. It will serve very largely to fix it in mind, however, if you will have the child hunt out these examples for himself and make a list of them.
Use Visualization
Teach the child to visualize the words which he studies each day in his spelling lesson. You may not be able to visualize them yourself, but if you have started early in training him, he will have little difficulty in doing so. Exaggeration should be used as an aid in spelling. It will be easier to see the words printed in letters from three to six feet high on the wall of the room, than to see them in pica type on the paper. If your child has difficulty in visualizing the words in the spelling lesson have him exaggerate and color them in his mind's eye picture.
Have the child take a piece of scratch paper and colored crayons and print the difficult words in large letters, using two colors, one for consonants and the other for vowels. If the child has difficulty in learning the sequence of "ie" and "ei" have him follow the plan of using two strong colors, such as red and blue for the two vowels. Have him print all the words with which he has difficulty, using red for the "e" and blue for the "i." This color impression combined with the enlarged letter, will overcome the difficulty.
Spelling Exercise
In order to help the child to become sure of himself write a list of words spelled incorrectly. Have him go over them and correct them, or tell what the error is.
Spelling rules should be learned by making visual pictures of the word to which the rule applies, and not by simply learning a group of words, the meaning of which sometimes is not fully appreciated.