Sharing Rambling, Resources and Recipes for Learning in Life

Sharing Rambling, Resources and Recipes for Learning in Life

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Closed Syllables

By AudreaLeave a comment

You know there’s a commercial I’ve seen many times and one of the tag lines is “….a little pill with a big story to tell…”  Closed syllables are rather like that.  They are almost the smallest words we have in our language.  Open syllables can actually be shorter, using a single letter.  But, closed syllables, which can be as short as two letters form over 50% of the words in our language.  If these syllables make up over half of our language, they are worth knowing and knowing well!

Let’s start with what a syllable is in general.  Simply put, and the definition I teach all of my students in my phonics catechism, “A syllable is a word or a part of a word with one sounded vowel.”  I teach that there are six main kinds of syllables.  Those are closed syllables, open syllables, silent e syllables, vowel team syllables, r-controlled syllables and final stable syllables.  Closed syllables are the first kind of syllable I teach students to read because they are the most common and they use short vowel sounds which are the common sound, the sound a letter makes most often, I teach for vowels.

So, then what is a closed syllable?  The definition I teach for closed syllables is “A closed syllable has one vowel, ends in a consonant and the vowel is short.”  This includes simple words like at and it.  So you can see that students can also start reading these syllables as soon as they are fluent in two letter sounds.  Starting students reading quickly AS they are learning sounds helps them to stay engaged in the learning process as they are actually practicing the skill that is the purpose of learning letter names and sounds in the first place.  Children love the feelings of pride they experience as they are able to piece together these bits of knowledge to make words to read on their own!  This feeling of pride and wonder of discovery helps to keep them engaged and moving forward in their acquisition of fluency with letter names and sounds.  Learning closed syllables and the rule(s) that govern them, as well as learning open syllables and the other types later on, keeps readers from having to try out and guess at which vowel sound to use when sounding out a word.  They learn to recognize that if a word ends in a consonant and has one vowel that they should read that vowel with its short sound.

One reason that closed syllables make up so much of our language is that although they are as simple as two letter words like an and am, but are also words like champ and strand.  Any word that has one vowel and ends in a consonant is truly a closed syllable.  But those closed syllables include digraphs (two letters that come together to make one new sound; ch, sh, th, ph, wh), blends (two letters whose individual sounds can be hear in the new blended sounds; sl, tr, str, etc.), the floss rule (“When a word has one syllable a short vowel sound and ends in /f/, /l/, /s/, or /z/, double the final consonant.”), and distorted vowel sounds as in an and am, as well as the broad sound for a (“A makes its broad sound when it comes after a w or qu, before an l or at the end of a syllable.)  

Before you despair and say or feel one more time that it is hopeless to master English because it is crazy and makes no sense, take a deep breath and look back at the last few sentences.  What may seem like exceptions to the simple definition of a closed syllable are actually just examples of additional rules and facts that truly govern our language.  The English language IS complex, but it IS also governed ALMOST in its entirety by rules.  While there are many rules, according to one expert, Denise Eide, in her book, Uncovering the Logic of English, there are 31, once you learn those rules there are very few true exceptions in our language. The exceptions according to Denise Eide are fewer than 20 words.  31 rules may seem like a lot to remember, but when compared to remembering how to read and spell the thousands of words in our language, 31 quickly shrinks to a manageable number of pieces of information to learn and remember in order to master a truly wonderful, expressive, impressive language.  Learning these rules will also open up a world of possibility for you and your little learners if you are a teacher in the traditional classroom or your own classroom at home, interventionist, or just a parent with a struggling reader.

So, before you give up for yourself or a little (or not so little) learner who has been entrusted to you, take a deep breath and rest in the fact that English IS understandable.  One of the littlest and easiest parts to understand is the closed syllable.  A little group of letters, governed by one simple rule, that unlocks over half of our beautifully, complex, BUT understandable language.

Want more on how to teach about closed syllables?

Coming soon: week long lesson plan packets that include plans, activities and resources.  A fully print and teach option.
You can find additional activities on my TpT store for closed syllables from reading to spelling here, though right now. Just click, purchase, download and start teaching and learning!!

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How to Teach Phonics Based Reading

By AudreaLeave a comment

Just a bit ago, I was asked by a parent of one of the students I tutor, who is also a teacher, how I would teach reading.  Without hesitation I replied that I would start with the Six Syllable Types.

I read recently in an article by Keep Reading and Learning that “just under 50% of English Syllables are closed”.  50%!!  ANd that is just ONE syllable type.  When you teach children to decode the six syllable types, meaning whether the vowel is long or short or makes a special sound and what those special sounds are, you give them the tools to unlock the VAST majority of the words they will EVER encounter in reading. 

Within the syllable types there are a few additional rules and sounds to teach.  And outside of the syllable types there are things like broad vowel sounds, trigraphs, diphthongs and schwa to teach.  Although, some consider the schwa to be a 7th syllable type.

But, when you teach the six syllable types you are still unlocking almost all English words and you are doing it essentially by teaching 6 rules.  Once you teach these six rules to mastery you can sprinkle in a few more rules to help them with some “exceptions”.

Denise Eide, in her book, Uncovering the Logic of English, gives 31 rules that govern and explain all but less than 20 English words.  We are often told that English is so hard to read and write because it is full of exceptions.  And there are some exceptions.  But, when you realize that there are less than 20 true exceptions to the rules that govern our language it becomes a lot more manageable and it can give struggling readers and writers hope that they too can find success and enjoyment in our language!  31 rules may seem like a lot, but when you compare that to the alternative of memorizing thousands of words, 31 becomes a much more manageable number and makes so much more sense.

So, to recap.  I would always start by teaching children the six syllable types in teaching them to read (decode) and write/spell (encode) words.  If you are asking yourself what the six syllable types are, here is a list of them.  Closed, Open, Vowel Team, Silent E, R Controlled and Final Stable or Consonant-le Syllables.  I would teach them in this order as well with the possible exception of switching Vowel Teams and Silent E.  I will give a brief description of each syllable type below.  You can also download my All About Syllables printable to give you a definition and examples at a glance.

Before we dive into each syllable type, I want to point out a few other things to keep in mind when teaching reading that may seem like things everyone knows, but are actually things that should be taught to learners prior to trying to read or spell words.  Learners should be taught foundational facts like how many letters are in the alphabet (26), what kinds of letters (consonants and vowels), which letters are which, what makes a letter a vowel, and what kinds of sounds vowels make before you even talk about syllables and words.

For a letter to be a vowel it has to follow three rules.  First, it has to have a sound that you have to open your mouth to make. Second, the sound must be able to be sung (made continually without stopping). And third, it must be able to be sung LOUDLY and quietly.  If the sound of a letter floors all three of these rules then the letter gets to be a vowel.  This is why I always call y a consonant.  Its own sound cannot be sung, so I call it a consonant that sometimes makes a vowel sound.

Having students name all of the consonants in alphabetical order and all of the vowels in the same way as well as play games like you say a letter and they tell you the letter that comes next as quickly as they can without looking if possible, help to strengthen their knowledge of the alphabet and build their phonemic awareness which if one of the National Reading Panels five pillars of reading.

Once students can identify how many letters are in the alphabet, their sounds and type, then you can move onto defining a syllable regardless of type.  I have my students work through a phonics catechism which is just a series of questions I ask and memorized answers they learn and provide.  In that catechism we learn that a syllable is “a word or a part of a word with one sounded vowel”.  Because you have to open your mouth to make a vowel sound you can place your hand under your chin.  Then count how many times your chin moves when you say the word naturally.  Your chin will move every time you make a vowel sound because you have to open your mouth and each vowel sound equals one syllable.  Accurately counting syllables will again strengthen that pillar of Phonemic Awareness.

Now that your learner knows their letter sounds and types and what a syllable is, you are ready to start teaching them and practicing with each syllable type.

I always start with closed syllables because they are the simplest, although once you add in blends and/or digraphs (two letters that come together to make a new sound; ch, sh, ph, wh and th) closed syllables can become quite complex.  You can give you emerging readers and writers practice with all of these using my Closed Syllable Picture Labeling Bundle.  Also, remember that closed syllables account for about 50% of English syllables.

Simply put, and included in my Phonics Catechism, a closed syllable has “one vowel, ends in a consonant, and the vowel is short.”  It does not matter what comes before the vowel ONLY what comes after it.  So, at is a closed syllable even though it begins with a vowel because it ends with a consonant.  So are cat, splat and splash!

The syllable type that I teach after closed is open.  These two syllables are the simplest and learning them one after the other allows early readers to master the skills needed to unlock SO MANY words as well as the biggest reasons for when to use a short and when to use a long vowel sound.

An open syllable has “one vowel, ends in a vowel and the vowel is long.  Words in this group are words like the, he, so, and go.

At this point, if you haven’t already, you should be separating your letter cards as you practice sounds into beginning sounds (letters like l, k, f and s that aren’t usually spelled by themselves as ending sounds), medial sounds (vowels), and ending sounds (letters like x, b, d, t, m, n that can be used at the end of words in by themselves) and practice blending.  Then practice moving your reader back and forth between open and closed syllables by completely removing the ending consonant stack from time to time.  This makes the syllable that is left open because it now ends in a vowel and the vowel has to be read with its long sound.

The next two syllable types are really interchangeable in my opinion.  At this point it is about whichever one will allow your reader to access the most text.  You can teach Silent E and then Vowel Teams or vice versa.

A Silent E Syllable has “two vowels, one is the e at the end that makes the other vowel long”.  These are words like slide, date, note.This one is most often taught third in schools as a lot of levelized text includes silent e words.  One activity I like to do when teaching this syllable type is to use a worksheet of words or notecards with closed syllable words like slid, cut, hat on them and then a card with an e on it and have students notice the difference in reading cut and cute, hid and hide, or rate and rate.  This helps them start to notice this pattern as they encounter it in reading.  One rule you may want to teach at this point if you haven’t already is that c says /s/ before an e, i or y.  This is necessary for learners to correctly sound out words like ice, rice, mice, etc.  

A Vowel Team Syllable has “two vowels TOGETHER; when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking and says its name”.  The letter combinations I teach as vowel teams are ai and ay, ee and ea, oa and oe.  The nice thing when helping learners spell these vowel teams is that with ai and ay as well as oa and oe is you can teach that USUALLY ai and oa are found in the initial and medial positions in words and ay and oe at the end.  For ee and ea, I tell learners that ee is used most often and that the reason for the two different spellings of this sound is for the many homophones (words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things) that have the long e in them like peak and peek, see and sea, meat and meet.  For these words I try to teach students clues that help with the spellings as they come to mind, for example you EAT mEAT, you use two eyes to sEE and pEEk, so they are spelled with two e’s.

The last two syllable types are the least seen, but still very helpful to learn about for both reading and spelling.  They are R Controlled Syllables and Final Stable Syllables (also called Consonant-le Syllables).

An R Controlled Syllable “has one vowel followed directly by an r which makes the vowel make a special sound”.  These are the combinations ar, er, ir, or and ur.  Similar to the vowel teams two of these have helpful sounds that set them apart from the others and they are ar and or.  Each of these have a unique sound that only they make.  They can each make the /er/ sound at the end of a word in an unaccented syllable, but they are the only ones that say their specific unique sound of: ar = /ar/ and or = /or/.  The tricky culprits within this syllable type are er, ir, and ur.  All three of these say /er/ and can be found in all positions of words.  Again as with the /ee/ sound, one of the reasons for the variant spellings of /er/ is for the purpose of differentiating between homophones like fur and fir as well as turn and tern.  

The last syllable type I teach is Final Stable Syllables.  A final stable syllable has “a consonant-le”.  These syllables are the only syllable type that cannot be a full word on their own.  They will always be the last syllable of a root word.  There may be a word like handling that does not actually end in the c-le, but that is just because there is a suffix added to the end of the root/main word.  Some of these syllables are fle, cle, dle, ble, gle.  These words can have a closed syllable as in the word humble or an open syllable as in able come before them.

Some curriculums also will teach the schwa as a syllable type.  I teach this more as a variant pronunciation of the vowel sounds than a separate syllable type.  One reason to teach it as a syllable type is because the schwa sound depends on the accent of the syllable containing the vowel.  So, these are the syllable types that I teach, the order I generally teach them and the main set of rules that I start with when teaching a child to read.  I hope you find this post helpful.  If you do, please share it with other parents and teachers who would enjoy and benefit from it as well.

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The Foundational Skills Your Child Needs by the End of Kindergarten

By AudreaLeave a comment
My own kindergarten graduate!!

There are many ideas on this subject and there are certainly more intelligent people than I am that have information on this. Your child is your child and your intuition is important and good enough for this too! If you feel your child is missing something, they likely are. If you think they are doing well, they likely are. But sometimes, I know it is helpful for me to have a baseline to look at. I also know that in the institution of education it can get pretty overwhelming looking at ALL the standards students are supposed to learn and master and trying to decide between curriculums if you are schooling your child yourself. This list is NOT an exhaustive list of all that should be taught or covered in kindergarten AT ALL. Instead it is simply a list of what I see as the foundational MUSTS. These are the skills that I believe are integral to the success of students later on regardless of their future plans or careers based on what I have seen in my years teaching a variety of grades.

The longer I teach, the more I feel like the basics are getting lost in all the hype of different or new educational bandwagons. In the thirteen years I have taught, I have been through the initial switch to state standards based teaching (we used to just follow a curriculum, but this shift meant a focus on standards of learning instead of just going through a book) to Common Core standards and back to state standards. I have been through a switch to standards based grading from traditional grades, then back to traditional grading, and now back to standards based grading. In an attempt to better understand student needs when students struggle has caused educators to break learning down into specific skills and sub-skills. This can be helpful when remediating a learning gap. However, I feel it is much less effective or helpful on the educating side of things. While I believe it is helpful to look at all the pieces of data from a struggling students’ assessments, I do not believe that same piecing should happen when we are planning the teaching of those skills to students.  

The components of comprehension for example, I believe are best taught together as a whole instead of piece meal. Reading a classic novel and discussing the events, predicting what will come next, reviewing the characters, making moral applications to current events and ordering events is so much more effective in building learners comprehension skills. I highly recommend this approach because it also teaches children the necessity of paying attention and engaging with text. Instead often students may be taught comprehension with a lesson on main idea here and cause and effect there. This may help them, but since all of these skills are a part of comprehension I believe they are best served and more easily learned in an integrated lesson and experience. Experiences like reading rich literary texts, both fiction and non-fiction, current and classic and discussing all aspects of comprehension as you go. If we have students reading these same rich texts and talking or writing about what they are reading, I think we would be amazed at what they learn and the depths of comprehension they would achieve! This is just one example of how I believe students will benefit more from integrative education (the teaching of multiple skills/standards/topics at once) than specific standard targeted lessons. I believe integrative education naturally includes the supports (often called scaffolds in education circles) as well as a natural deepening of understanding and learning (think Bloom’s taxonomy or DOK levels). As I have learned more about how readers map words (place them in their permanent memory) based on meaning through orthographic mapping and read about educators like Marva Collins, I just feel more and more strongly that there are only a few necessary skills that children need to master and all of the other things just need to be integrated with those foundational skills. The list below is of those necessary foundational skills that a child should master in Kindergarten. I planned to make this post about what students need in all grades Kindergarten through Second Grade. However, I think I will instead post on each grade individually.

Necessary Skills from Kindergarten

Accurate and automatic ability to identify and produce rhyming words

Awareness of syllables in words

Ability to accurately and automatically manipulate sounds within words (say cat, now say cat and instead of /c/ say /b/, and the correct answer is bat, or say slump, instead of /s/ say /c/, and the correct answer is clump, or say mast, now say mast without ast, and the correct answer is /m/) – These skills and the rhyming and syllable counting are called Phonemic Awareness and you can read more about that here.

Accurate AND Automatic knowledge of all 26 letter names for both upper and lowercase letters

Accurate AND Automatic knowledge of all letter sounds for each letter

Awareness (exposure to and some knowledge of) of digraphs (ch, sh, ph, th, wh)

Accurate and Automatic knowledge of the names of all numbers 0-20

Ability to quickly and accurately (placed correctly on handwriting lined paper) write all 26 letters and numbers 0-20

Accurate and automatic counting to 100 by 1’s, 5’s and 10’s

Accurate and automatic counting to 20 by 2’s

Ability to count groups of objects up to 20

Ability to add and subtract up to 10, using manipulatives (counting bears, tokens, etc.) if necessary

Ability to cut on line to cut out shapes as small as a 1/2 sheet of paper

Extended Skills from Kindergarten

If your child is ready for more before the end of kindergarten then these are some skills your child would benefit from.

Accurate and automatic fluency with Math facts (addition and subtraction) to 20

Blending consonant vowel consonant words

Accurate and automatic counting of syllables in words (up to four syllables)

Begin writing on wide ruled notebook paper

Cutting out smaller objects

Begin writing complete sentences (focusing on capitalization at the beginning of the sentence, names and the pronoun I and including punctuation at the end of the sentence)

Again, this list is not exhaustive. Especially in regards to all the information that should be taught in kindergarten. This is instead a thoughtful consideration of all that information and a look at it with the end in mind. That end being first grade, sixth grade, high school or college. Then thinking about, what, if they had nothing else, MUST they have. This list, especially, the necessary skills list will NOT match with public school expectations. It will however match most age based ideas on reading development which tend to run about a grade slower than the expectations of state and Common Core standards. The most unique thing about education is that we are teaching unique individuals. Some children will be ready for more, even beyond the Extended Skills list above. This list is what I would use though to gauge if there is going to be a long term deficit in learning leaving kindergarten. And, if all of the necessary skills are firmly in place and some of the extended skills have been explored, your child will do well in the long run. ESPECIALLY, if for reading they are thoroughly skilled in phonemic awareness and in math if they have a really strong understanding of numbers 1-20 and the patterns within that group (1’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s).

Please let me know if you find this list helpful. If your child is in public school and they have only mastered the Necessary list I would consider some tutoring because they will struggle to keep up in first grade. If you are homeschooling these skills are so important that they deserve as much time as your child needs to deeply and completely master them. Also, if you are homeschooling and are doing a grade 0 (starting school early, but not pushing things really hard) I would strongly consider using the list of necessary skills as a guideline for what to focus on. Having that firm foundation will allow them to gain other skills more quickly, thereby alleviating any deficit there may appear to be early on. Just as when you are building a house or any other building, the stronger and more accurate the foundation, the more quickly the rest of the construction will go and the higher the quality of the WHOLE thing!! That is why when you start something you should keep the end in mind. It’s also why the question, “Is my child behind?” can have different answers. It depends on what your child needs to be ready for.

Let me know if you find this list helpful! Do you have any other specific skills you would include or that you are wondering about? I would love to hear your thoughts, questions or concerns!!

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Syllabication of Words

By AudreaLeave a comment
An example of syllabicating a word with the vcv pattern

After I wrote the post about the syllable types, I realized that if that was completely new information then you might need information about how to syllabicate words. So, today I am going top talk a little bit about how to syllabicate words and the purpose of doing so. When I went through my trainings with Brainspring on syllabication they would say that the purpose of syllabication was to get close enough to pronounce the word correctly. What that meant was that breaking the word down through their syllabication processes would get you close enough to pronounce/read the word, but may not match a dictionary’s syllabication. In this post I am not going to include all of the details of their program, I am certainly not qualified to teach all that they offer. I just want to give you an overview of how to syllabicate words and the purposes it serves.

First, similar to the syllable types there are syllable pattern types. There are 3 types. There are vccv (vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel), vcv (vowel, consonant, vowel), and vv (vowel, vowel). Also, before we talk about the three types, I want to mention that you will only use syllabication with multisyllabic words. You can find most of the syllable types in one syllable words as I mentioned in the Syllable Type posts, but you don’t need to syllabicate unless there are two or more syllables in a word.

The easiest way to syllabicate is to find the first 2 vowels and then you have to look between the vowels to see how many consonants are between. We will talk about the three different syllable pattern types, now.

  1. Vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel

The first thing to do is to find the first two vowels. You need to remember that there are some times when vowels go together with another letter and count as a consonant like with qu. Also, when two vowels are together and they count as one vowel like vowel teams, ee, ea, ue, ie, oe. If there are two consonants between the vowels then the word would be divided between the two consonants. An example of this pattern would be better, bet (closed syllable) ter (r controlled syllable). Sometimes there will be three consonants between the vowels, but will always have a blend that should be treated like one consonant. This is the case for words like constrain. In this word you would actually group s, t, and r together and count it as one consonant. So the first syllable would be con (closed syllable) and the second syllable would be strain (vowel team syllable)

2. Vowel, consonant, vowel

This kind of syllable pattern has two options for where to break the word. You should always try before the consonant first. That will leave you with an open syllable as the first syllable and thereby a long vowel sound in that syllable. An example of this would be raven, ra (open syllable) and ven (closed syllable). If that pronunciation is incorrect than you should move the break to behind the consonant to provide a closed syllable and thereby a short vowel sound in that syllable. An example of this would be cabin, cab-closed syllable and in-closed syllable. That should then give you the correct pronunciation. There are only a few reasons why it might not. One is a schwa syllable type. An example of that exception is the word banana. I went over that word in this Syllable Types, Part 2 post.

3. Vowel, vowel

The last syllable pattern type is vowel, vowel. This is where there are two vowels side by side, but they are not a vowel team or a diphthong. Each vowel in this scenario is a sounded vowel and thereby fall into their own syllables. The first one would be open and thereby have a long vowel sound and the second syllable would depend on what if anything comes after the second vowel. An example of this type of syllable pattern is the word eon. The syllables break down to e (long syllable) and on (short syllable).

These are the three types of syllabication patterns. The point of doing syllabication is to help decode (read) unknown multisyllabic words. When words get this long it is no longer effective to sound out words as a whole. It becomes nearly impossible to keep all of those sounds in mind by the time you get to the end of a 7, 8 or 9 letter word. Also, as words get longer and multiple different syllable types are combined, the vowel sounds change and it is necessary to know what type of syllable you are looking at to determine which vowel sound to use.

These are the three syllable patterns to look for when syllabicating and how to divide each one. This is also some of the reasons for using syllabication in decoding. It is like learning to count by 2’s or 5’s instead of 1’s. Now you only have to read a few chunks instead of 7 or more individual sounds to decode the word. Counting by 10’s is like using roots to decode words. We will talk about that in a later post. I recommend some teaching on each of these patterns in isolation to familiarize readers with the process. But, I would teach the majority of this as “real life” unknown, multisyllabic words come up in reading.

Let me know how this information helps you. I am planning to do another post on syllabicating that shows each step of the process.

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Syllable Types, Part 2

By AudreaLeave a comment

In Syllable Types, Part 1, we talked about the 6 syllable types you will find in just about any article you look up, product you look for or purchase and in any phonics program you try. Today we are going to talk about 2 more types that are not always included. Even though they are not always included they are valuable to know about. These syllable types help with understanding the pronunciation of words and some more seeming rule exceptions that actually have an explanation or another rule they are following. These two types of syllables are Diphthong Syllables and Schwa Syllables.

It was interesting to me in thinking about this post last night and as I am writing it today to realize that although, I have always been taught about these syllable types in conjunction with learning how to syllabicate (diagram syllables) multisyllabic (2 or more syllables) words. However, 6 of the 8 types will be encountered by readers in single syllable words. All the syllable types except Consonant le and Schwa Syllables can be found in single syllable words. Cat is a Closed Syllable, he is an Open Syllable, white is a Silent e Syllable, meet is a Vowel Team Syllable, mark is an R Controlled Syllable, and boil is a Diphthong Syllable.

The Consonant le syllables are sometimes called Final Stable Syllables because they come at the end of words (final) and they are their own syllable (stable syllable). Since the C-le Syllable contains it’s own vowel sound, it is it’s own syllable, but none of them form complete words. Therefore they cannot be found in single syllable words. Schwa’s are dependent for position on accented syllables within a word. Therefore, to my knowledge no single syllable words would be Schwa Syllables. However, I do know that we as American’s get lazy with our pronunciation of vowel sounds within words at times and therefore may have created some schwa single syllable words based purely on dialect instead of English rules.

Okay let’s get to the subjects of the day, Diphthong and Schwa Syllables. I will discuss both of these individually. We will talk about what they are, why they are not always included in Syllable Type lists and how they effect readers’ decoding and pronunciation skills and abilities. First up, Diphthong Syllables.

  1. Diphthong Syllables

Diphthong Syllables are not always included in syllable lists and programs because not all programs, teachers, people, differentiate between diphthongs and vowel teams. Remember, a vowel team is technically a team of two vowels that follow the rule “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking’ and says it’s name’. Vowel teams therefore would only include ie, oe, ai, ee, ea, and most programs would include ay here. I don’t love that inclusion because y is not a vowel. I would personally be more likely to include ue because both letters are vowels and follow the rule for the u saying it long vowel sound and the e being silent. I am honestly not sure why programs do not include ue, unless it is because it is not common. Another possible reason may be because according to some articles I have read, the e is in words like true, is not a part of a vowel team, but an obscure use of silent e because English words don’t end in u.

Merriam Webster defines a diphthong as “linguistics : a gliding (see GLIDE entry 1 sense 4) monosyllabic speech sound (such as the vowel combination at the end of toy) that starts at or near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves to or toward the position of another”. So, a diphthong has a sound that includes two sounds blended or glided over together, but not really a blend of the two sounds the letters would make individually as in blends like bl, tr, fl, etc. Also, there are still two different sounds instead of two letters coming together to make one new sound like digraphs sh, ch, ph, th, wh. Here are the most common diphthongs I think of; oi as in oil, oy as in boy, au as in sauce, aw as in saw, ou in sound, and ow in low or cow.

One thing to keep in mind about the diphthongs oi and oy are that they make the same sound. Another thing is that oi is generally at the beginning of or in the middle of words like oil and soil. Lastly, oy is generally at the end of words like boy or enjoy (en-closed syllable, joy-diphthong syllable).

With au and aw they again make the same sound like oi and oy. This time it is au that is typically found at the beginning of or in the middle of words like audit (aud-diphthong syllable, it-closed syllable) and sauce. And aw comes generally at the end of words like saw and slaw.

Ou and ow are the same as au and aw in respect to having the same sound and the second letter determines their placement in words. Ou is found in the middle of words like found and at the beginning of words like out. Ow is found at the end of words like cow and endow (en-closed syllable, dow-diphthong syllable). The unique thing about ow is that is has two sounds. It makes it’s traditional matching sound to ou in bow (bending at the waist as a sign of respect, pride or gratitude), but also a long o sound in snow and bow. So, this is one spelling that it is important to teach children both sounds for from the beginning. That way when they come to the word b-o-w, they can use both pronunciations and context from the text to determine the correct sound to use.

The most important thing to do in regards to diphthongs and growing readers is to teach them the sound or sounds for these letter combinations so that they will start to recognize then as a sound unit instead of two separate letter sounds. One activity you can use to help your reader start to recognize these letter combinations as a single unit is after a lesson on them have them find all of that combination on a page of a book they are reading or a printed passage or in a magazine or newspaper. You can just have them find as many as they can for 1 minute, so it doesn’t become a huge laborious task. And, if you are using an authentic text (one you are reading anyway or a magazine or newspaper) instead of a decodable text (one devoted to specific letter or letter combination sounds) they may not find any. That is okay, just looking for them will help them make the connection to look for and see these letters as one letter sound unit.

The importance of knowing that diphthong’s form a syllable is that it reiterates to readers that every sounded vowel is a syllable. Syllabicating words with diphthongs in them helps readers become more fluent in recognizing these letter pairs (all of them have two letters as the root di- at the beginning of the word shows. Di- means two.) Fluently recognizing these letter combinations and being fluent in knowing their sound or sounds will greatly aid you growing reader as they encounter longer and more complex words in their reading journey.

2. Schwa Syllables

Schwa Syllables are syllables when the single vowel in the syllable makes a distorted sound. The sound it makes is the short u sound of /uh/. This can happen with any vowel. To be completely honest schwa’s are very complicated to explain thoroughly for me. That is because the placement of a schwa sound has to do with accented and unaccented syllables. I think that it is very valuable to teach young children about accented and unaccented syllables. I think it is less helpful to try to teach older, struggling readers. The reason behind this is that young children can learn new things easily, in most cases, and can therefore, most likely, be taught to hear the accent in words fairly easily. However, for older people like myself or my middle school students who have not been exposed to accented syllables and have not been trained from an early age to hear the accent, it can be VERY difficult to learn.

Different ways to syllabicate the word banana.

The most critical thing to teach students about the schwa syllables and schwa in general is again the sound it makes. That way growing readers have another option for when they are decoding (sounding out) unknown words and the actual vowel sound as dictated by the syllable type (open or closed) doesn’t work. For instance in the word banana, you can syllabicate it a few different ways, ban-an-a, ba-na-na, ba-nan-a. According to open and syllable types and the vowel sounds each uses (closed syllables have 1 or more consonants after the vowel and use short vowel sounds, open syllables end in a vowel and use long vowel sounds), the pronunciation of the word changes based on which syllabication you use. The first option, ban-closed, an-closed and a-open would be pronounced ban-an-ay, not how we say the word. The second option, ba-open, na-open, and na-open would be pronounced bay-nay-nay, still not how we say the word. The last option, ba-open, nan-closed, and a-open would be pronounced bay-nan-ay, our last option (and the correct one), but still not how we say the word. Insert schwa syllables and we can finally get to the correct pronunciation. Because the middle syllable is accented (said with more force) it is pronounced correctly as a closed syllable with a true short a sound. However, the unaccented first and last syllables both use the schwa sound of /uh/ for the a. Therefore, we finally get our pronunciation of the word as buh-nan-uh. And the syllables are ba-schwa syllable, nan-closed syllable, a-schwa syllable.

To review, our last two syllable types are diphthongs and schwas. These are most important in helping readers have additional sounds for decoding (sounding out) words. Both of these syllable types are important and I believe that they should be included when teaching syllable types. How deep you go beyond the sounds of the diphthongs and the schwa depends on the needs of your readers and the complexity of the texts they have progressed to.

If you have taught these syllable types to your child or class, how did it go? If you found this information helpful please like this post! Please share your thoughts and experiences below so that we can continue to learn together!

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5 Things to Listen for When Your Child Reads

By AudreaLeave a comment
The girls working on their AMI assignments!

I have been working with both girls on their reading and with my sister and niece on helping her become a proficient reader as well. In thinking about this journey with these precious girls, I have thought of 5 different things that parents or teachers should listen for when they listen to their readers. I know that it is vital to correct readers as they read so that they do not develop compensation strategies or learn bad or incorrect reading habits. However, if you don’t know what you are listening for or what to do when you do hear your child make mistakes then it can feel like a useless and frustrating experience. So, I have put together a few things to listen for and some possible causes and correcting strategies for those specific mistakes.

  1. Mispronunciation of letter sounds

If your child is reading and they read an unknown word with one mispronounced sound, like reading last instead of the list, pat instead of put or sit instead of lit, then the first step would be to ask then to sound out the word. If they sounded it out to begin with, but read one of the sounds incorrectly, ask them to sound it out again. If the wrong sound is used again, ask the reader to spell the word. Then have them sound it out again. If they are still using the incorrect sound, ask them the sound of the letter they are miscueing on. If they give the correct sound have them sound out the word again. Repeat this until they use the correct sound with each letter. If they give you the wrong sound for the miscued letter, give them the correct sound and have them repeat the sound to you a few times. Then have them sound out the word again. Once they have sounded out the word correctly continue on.

If this is an extremely frustrating process for your child you might just note the miscued word and letter. Then work on it at a better time when they are fresh and are less likely to reach frustration level. Also, always note the letters that your reader miscues on, especially if it is the same letter/letters repeatedly. Then at a separate time work on the sound of that letter to increase automaticity of the sound. Often when a reader is making this kind of miscue they may know the sound the letter makes (they have accurate knowledge of the sound), but they do not have instant recall of it (they do not have automatic knowledge of the sound).

2. Word Calling

My oldest tends to start doing this when she gets tired of reading. My youngest does it when she’s reading at the upper level of her independent reading band or she is intimidated by what she is reading or her audience. Word calling is when a reader looks at the first or first couple of letters and then just calls a word from their oral vocabulary that matches that letter or beginning like saying instance for ice, or yellow for yelling, or accentuate for accident. That last one may seem unlikely for you, but I have certainly heard something similar from my oldest. She has a large oral vocabulary that far exceeds to her sight word vocabulary. If you are not sure what sight word vocabulary is, I explain it more in my post on Orthographic Mapping. So, once she’s tired of reading and sounding out words she will just sound out the first couple letters and then pull a word form her oral vocabulary and use it instead of whatever is actually written on the page. The most remarkable thing is that even with doing this and often making the mistake talked about in number 5 she manages to gain the gist of the story and typically have remarkable comprehension!

One strategy that I have seen for this is from the book Equipped for Reading Success by David Kilpatrick. He talks in it about compensation strategies struggling readers will use and he suggests sometimes having students work out words from the middle out or from the end forward. That means choosing one of the syllables from the end or middle and covering the rest of the word up and then work from that point to the rest of the word. So, if your readers was word calling the word invisible, you could have them read the consonant le syllable at the end by covering up everything but ble, then add in visi for visible and then add in the prefix to read the whole word invisible.

Another thing I work on with my girls is just telling them to reread and to always be sure to read all the way through the word. I generally use this when it is a shorter word they are word calling with, like saying bath for bird. Another thing to consider if this is happening a lot with your reader is that possibly they are feeling really taxed with the level or amount of reading they are doing in each sitting. So, you can either give them shorter passages to read or easier books for a time in order to increase their sight vocabulary before moving back to the longer or higher level passages or books. You can also just limit the amount they are reading from the same level of text, a chapter instead of the whole book, or a page instead of a chapter or trade off one sentence that you read and one sentence that they read.

3. Sounding out known words

I find that this happens sometimes when a reader gets nervous about a change in their audience or overwhelmed with the text they are reading. Sometimes, I think it also just happens by habit. If a reader has been reading a passage or book, especially if it a decodable text, and they have kept automatically reading a word that is in their sight vocabulary and then all of a sudden they try to sound it out instead, there are usually a few reasons I have noticed. One is that they are paying more attention to who is listening and worrying about their reaction than they are paying to the text or story. Another reason is that they are used to being prompted to sound words out and they revert to that habit. A third and similar reason is that the sentences or page that the student in on has several other words that the reader does have to decode (sound out) and so again they revert to that habit even on a word that they don’t have to use decoding to read.

I find it most helpful to just prompt them to read the whole word at once. Or, if it is a word that has been repeated throughout the text and they have been reading it automatically from their sight vocabulary, I show them one printing of it that they read automatically and the one they just sounded out and show then that they are the same word. I will often interrupt their sounding out to show them the match, so that they do not fully revert to sounding out that word.

4. Using the wrong vowel sounds

Sometimes when a learner is reading they will use a long vowel sound when they should use a short sound or visa versa. This is generally a similar issue to using the wrong sound for one of the letters when sounding out words. You may notice this as a new problem for a reader who has never done it before after introducing long vowel sound words like Open Syllables or Silent e Syllables. Then the learner may over apply those rules and start reading CVC words they never had trouble with before with long vowels, like reading cat as cate or pick as pike. This is again a problem with having accurate knowledge of a vowel rule, but not automatic knowledge. This can best be addressed with additional practice with a blending board and going back and forth between open and closed syllables like he and hen and practice with words like can and then adding a Silent e and making the word cane. As the reader gets more practice with activities like this their knowledge grows from accurate to automatic.

5. Reading the wrong word with the correct letters

This is the hardest one for me to give suggestions on. First, let me tell you what I mean by it. This is when a reader reads left for felt. So, they have seen all the letters and are using the correct sounds for them, but they have reordered them in their brain and called the wrong word. The best hope here would be that the reader would be paying enough attention to the story or passage that they would recognize their error when the sentence no longer makes sense. Sadly, that is not always the case.

The first thing I would try when this happens is to simply stop the reader and tell them to reread the sentence that the incorrect word was in. If the reader doesn’t correct their mistake then I would ask them to tell me the meaning of the sentence and reread again. I would do this to see if that causes them to correct their misread. If it still doesn’t correct their mistake then I would have them sound out that specific word. At times I have had readers who struggle a lot with this difficulty, sound the word out correctly and still say the misread word. So, the child reading left incorrectly as felt would correctly sound out /l/ /e/ /f/ /t/ and then when blending together into the word would still say felt. I would ask them to try again a couple of times. If it still doesn’t work, I will sound out the word orally to the student and see if that causes them to hear left instead of felt. If that still doesn’t work, I will ask them to say the sounds and ask them if that makes the word felt or left. Often by this point, especially if they are listening and not looking at the word they will call the correct word. The last thing I try to do for this is to have the child tell me the word again and then spell it for me to help move them to completing their orthographic mapping of that word.

Now you have a few specific things to listen for when listening to your growing readers. And some strategies that will help you help them outgrow some of these limiting habits. Also, here are a few of my biggest take aways from working with readers:

  1. Some accurate reading is better than a lot of inaccurate reading
  2. Never be afraid to let readers read easier text on occasion to build confidence and alleviate compensating habits
  3. Be sure to encourage and compliment as often as you corret
  4. Use as many authentic reading opportunities as possible for practice, (reading to younger students, reading directions, reading a recipe, etc.)

Let me know if you have encountered any of these struggles with your readers. If you try any of these tips to help them overcome these troublesome habits, please share how it goes.

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Syllable Types, Part 1

By Audrea2 Comments

According to different programs there are always 6 different syllable types, but there can be as many as 8. The six basic syllable types are Closed Syllables, Open Syllables, Silent e Syllables, R Controlled Vowel Syllables, Vowel Team Syllables and Consonant le or c-le Syllables. Other programs add Diphthong Syllables and Schwa Syllables. Today we will discuss what each of the basic 6 syllable types are and why knowing them is important to helping learners on their reading journey.

First let’s talk about what the syllable types are and what they mean to reading. The syllable types are simply a way of identifying the role of the vowel in each syllable and informs the reader of which vowel sound to use in each syllable. It will tell the reader if the single vowel is long or short. It also tells the reader which of two vowels are sounded if there are multiple vowels in a syllable. The last thing it tells the reader is if the sounded vowel makes a sound that is different from it’s long or short sound as in the case of c-le, r controlled, diphthong and schwa syllables. Now we will talk about what each of the basic 6 syllable types are.

  1. Closed Syllables

The first syllable type children learn to read are closed syllables. This is because the first kind of words children are typically taught are CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. These are the most basic form of closed syllables. A closed syllable is simply a syllable that ends in a consonant. A lot of people remember what a closed syllable is, by remembering that the vowel is closed in by a consonant. This syllable type always uses the short sound for the vowel in the syllable. It is a syllable with a single vowel that is followed by a consonant. Simple examples of this are am, cat, get, and hut. This rule for a closed syllable using a short vowel sound is the reason for some otherwise seemingly extra letters in words like letters. It may seem redundant to have two t’s in the word letters until you realize that the syllable break comes between the two t’s and if there was only one t then it could change the word to having a long e sound and then the pronunciation would change to match the word liters.

To review, a closed syllable is a syllable with one vowel that is followed by one or more consonants. Some more examples are in, kit, snack and the first syllable FIDdle.

2. Open Syllables

The next syllable type children are typically taught is open syllables. They are the opposite of closed syllables. In these syllables the last letter is a vowel. So, these syllables are often remembered as the vowels being open to say their names (long sounds). Remember you can use whatever terms you would like to use to help your individual learner or learners remember these syllable types. But, be careful to call things by their proper names as often as possible (long sound instead of a vowel saying it’s name) to help your learner progress faster and have fewer “new” things to learn. I discuss this idea more thoroughly in my post on Silent e.

3. The third syllable type we will discuss is Silent e Syllables.

Silent e syllables are syllables that have an e at the end of the syllable that make the other vowel in the syllable make it’s long sound as in the words make and hike. One thing that can be kind of tricky for learners when they are syllabicating with Silent e Syllables is that sometimes, when the Silent e syllable comes at the beginning or the middle of the word (when it is not at the end of a word), the e may get dropped. This depends on what comes after the Silent e Syllable. These are still Silent e Syllables even though the e is missing like the middle syllable in misTAKen, or the first syllable in LIKing.

4. R Controlled Syllables

R controlled syllables are syllables that have a vowel follwed directly by an r. Whenever a vowel is followed by an r it makes a different sound than it’s long or short sound or sounds (remember a makes two short sounds, /a/ as in cat and /o/ as in all, and u makes two long sounds /U/ as in cute and /oo/ flute). The trickiest part of r controlled vowels is that three of them make the same sound. This actually simplifies things for reading, but it complicates spelling a bit. er, ir and ur all say /er/ as in fern, bird, and urn. ar and or are easier to remember and distinguish because they generally have their own unique sounds, ar says the sound /are/ and or says the sound of the word it spells /or/. There are sometimes like in the words, word or world, when or says /er/ like er, ir and ur. But, generally, these two r controlled vowels have their own sound. Once your reader has mastered their letter names and sounds it is a good idea to start teaching them the sounds of the digraphs (two letters that come together to make a new sound) wh, ph, sh, th and ch, and the r controlled vowels along with other letter combinations that make specific sounds that are separate from their individual sounds.

5. Vowel Team Syllables

Vowel teams are two vowels that are side by side that follow the rule of, when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking and says it’s name. (Okay, I know, more cutesy stuff, I told you it’s a hard habit to break!!) There are only 6 true vowel teams, although some programs include some diphthongs (letter combinations that include vowels that make a different sound like oi, oy, aw, ow, au, and ou) in their vowel team list. The 6 true vowel teams are ai, ea, ee, ie, and oe. You will find words like said, head, and cutie that bring up either exceptions or other rules for these letter combinations. But these combinations typically follow the rule of the first vowel being long and the second vowel being silent as in mail, sea, see, pie, and toe. So, teaching your reader that these teams make one sound and that sound is the long sound of the first vowel is a reliable reading rule for them to lean on.

6. Consonant le Syllables

Consonant le Syllables are found at the end of words and I have heard them actually called final stable syllables. This syllable type falls into one of those lesser known reasons or rules for a Silent e that I mentioned in that previous post. These syllables actually have a distorted or schwa vowel sound to them. The vowel sound for all of these is a short /oo/ sound. Words like stable, wobble, fiddle, indelible have a consonant le syllable as their final syllable. This syllable type will only be found at the end of multisyllabic words as they cannot stand alone as their own word and they always occur at the end of a word. The only possible exception to these being at the end of a word would be if a suffix has been added after it or it is a compound word like stablehand.

Although, some programs include the two other syllable types of Schwa and Diphthongs and I certainly think they are worth discussing, I will save them for another post. This one covers the 6 basic syllable types and includes a lot of information to digest in one sitting. I also plan to do a post on how to syllabicate or diagram syllables within words to help your reader decode longer and more complex words.

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Silent e, Rules and Reasons

By Audrea3 Comments
Silent E: Teaching Kids the Whole Truth - All About Reading

Today we are talking all about silent e. I recently read an email form Children Learning to Read about 5 reasons silent or magic e is used. One of them, I think we all knew, some of the others, I knew, but don’t always or often think about, and some were completely new to me. Since all of these rules will help your child and you learn to become a stronger reader and writer/speller, I thought I would share!

You may notice me using silent e and magic e interchangeably, you may notice the same things with a vowel saying it’s name or long sound. That is because I have had years of teacher training that taught me all these cute sayings to use with young children. I am trying to get away from doing that and using the “grown up” or real terms for things now. But, it is a hard habit to break. I am trying to break it because it causes unnecessary confusion and unnecessary relearning for children. An example of this is that traditionally, children first learn that vowels only make one sound (their short sounds). Then, we teach them that vowels are actually special letters that make two sounds. This is when we tell them that vowels say their names. Later, the child has to learn that those first sounds they learned that vowels make are called short sounds. After that, they learn that vowels names are called their long sounds. Next, they have to learn that a actually has two short sounds and u has two long sounds. Are you exhausted yet!?! Imagine if you were 5 or 6! This progression is not really necessary. I have found that if we expose children to all of their learning from the beginning and only expect mastery of the part that we are focusing on, they learn much more quickly and actually have fewer things to learn. Doing it this way with vowels streamlines things very nicely for learners. Children learn from the beginning that a and u have three sounds, and that e, i and o have two sounds. As they are mastering those sounds we start calling them long and short. Once a child has mastered listing/producing all of the sounds for each of the letters, we can move on to now expecting them to learn and know which are called short and which are called long. This won’t take long because the child has been hearing this information all along. In addition, a child reaches mastery of all the sounds of the letters much more quickly and has more tools to help them read more words more quickly (even before they’ve learned all the rules).

Back to the rules or reasons for using a silent e at the end of words in the English language. We will start with the one that we are all most familiar with:

  1. Use a silent e at the end of a word to make the other vowel in the syllable make it’s long sound.

I say the other vowel in the syllable because this rule is used in single syllable words such as make or site, and multisyllabic words such as awake or antiquate. But, the silent e will always come at the end of the last syllable of the word, and will only affect the other vowel in that syllable. One thing that helps me keep this straight is the fact that a syllable is “a word or a part of a word with one sounded vowel”. So, even though the word make, which is one syllable, has two vowels in it, only the a is a sounded vowel. Therefore, one vowel sound in the word means one syllable in the word.

2. Use a silent e at the end of a word to make c or g say it’s soft sound.

This is another rule or reason for using a silent e that I knew, but don’t always think of. This is why there is a seemingly irrelevant e at the end of words like manage or essence. When we think of silent e’s as only having the role of the first rule, then these words do not seem to follow the rules and become some of a seemingly unending pile of exceptions in our language. BUT, when we remember the rule that a c or a g followed by an e, i or y makes it’s soft sound, then all of a sudden these “extra” e’s serve a purpose and make sense for the accurate pronunciation and spelling of these words!

This is where my knowledge of silent e’s rules and roles stopped. But the article I read from Children Learning to Read shared 3 more!

3. Use silent e to change the spelling of homophones.

Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different meanings like pair, pare and pear or bear and bare. These are the homophones I have seen and thought of the most. But there are other homophones that includes plural forms of one word and a totally different word that sounds just like the plural. These are words such as pleas (plural of a plea) and please (to make someone happy). Or another and humorous example is moos (two sounds from a cow) and moose (a large four legged animal).

4. Use a silent e because English words do not end in u or v.

This is one, I recognized once I read it and saw examples, but I did NOT know as a rule for our language! Now those rule breaking exceptions of have and give, just aren’t. I know you may be wondering, like I do, why can’t our words end in u or v, and I don’t know! But, as a child who is learning to write and spell, if I know that English words can’t and that when there a u or v as the last sound I hear in a word, I add an e, I’ll spell so many more words correctly like true and blue. AND, they won’t seem like more words in an ever mounting pile of rule breakers! I am a rule follower by nature, but I’m pretty sure even if I wasn’t, I would find these rules comforting! This is because they are like a road map, and the more of them I know the more detailed the map becomes and the easier it is to find my way! On to our last rule!

5. Every syllable has to have a vowel.

I never really thought of this one because the first thing I learned in regards to this (as a teacher, I didn’t learn anything about syllable types or this rule as a child) was the final stable syllable type of consonant le, like –cle, –dle, –fle, etc. These became syllables for me because they had a vowel sound, and I was taught to have my students circle them when we were syllabicating (diagraming the syllables in words). But, I do know, as mentioned earlier, that every syllable has to have a vowel sound. This just takes it one step further and says that it not only has to have the vowel sound, but an actual written vowel. So, even if the e doesn’t make it’s own short or long vowel sound, it is written here to represent the vowel sound in these syllables in words like stable, little, and bottle.

I hope these 5 rules help you gain a better understanding of the reading and spelling rules that really do govern our language. I hope and pray that they help you reduce your pile of exceptions. And, I hope and pray you get to share this knowledge with someone to make their reading and writing journey easier!

Did you know all of these rules? Do you know any more or different rules about silent e? What has been your most astonishing rule to learn about the English language? Please share so we can continue to learn together!

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C vs. K; Unlocking the Spelling Mystery with the C and K Rules

By AudreaLeave a comment

The sound /k/ is one of the sounds with the most variants in it’s spellings. You can spell this sound using a c or a k or the letter combination of ck. That can make it seem very complicated to know how to correctly spell this sound. Fortunately there are rules to help guide us to know which spelling to use when.

We will start with c. You can use the letter c to spell the sound /k/ which is called the hard sound of the letter c at the beginning of words or the end of words. It can be used at the beginning of words when the letter coming after the /k/ sound is an a, o, u or any consonant. Some words that show this are cat, cot, cut and crash. You can use it for the /k/ sound at the end of words, but generally only after the short i sound as in the suffix -ic in the word iconic or in a words like epic. One of the best ways I have seen to remember the times to use c for the /k/ sound at the beginning of words is a drawing of a cat. Cat starts with a c because the next letter is an a. In the picture of the cat, the eyes are a’s, the nose is an o and the mouth is a u. The collar on the cat has the word consonants on it. Below is a picture of the cat that has everything but the consonant collar. I downloaded this picture as a free download from Ashley Ann on Teachers Pay Teachers. And here is a link to a sort that I have in my store, Basics Rethought, at Teacher’s Pay Teachers for students to use for practice or as proof of mastery after learning about the rules for both c and k at the beginning of words.

Use c to spell /k/ before an a, o, u or any consonant!

The letter k is used to spell the sound /k/ before an e, i or a y. Examples of this are key, kite, and the name Kyle. The best way that I have seen this represented is with a kite. I am posting a photo of the kite below, again from the free download from Ashley Ann on Teachers Pay Teachers. The reason we must use a k to spell /k/ before these letters is because when c comes before the letters e, i, and y, it makes it’s soft sound /s/ instead of the /k/ sound. Examples of this are city, center and cyclone. This information needs to be taught to students with the above information about using the letter c to spell /k/ at the beginning of words before students are ready to use my c/k Picture sort. K is also used at the end of words when the /k/ sound follows a consonant sound or a long vowel sound like in trunk and meek. K is also the spelling for /k/ in silent or magic e words as in make or like. This is because when c is followed by a silent e it makes it’s soft sound of /s/ instead of the hard sound of /k/ as in mice.

Use the letter k to spell /k/ before an e, i or y.

Our last rule to talk about today is for using c and k together to spell the /k/ sound. -ck is used to spell the /k/ sound at the end of one syllable words when it comes directly after a short vowel sound as in the word duck. This is the reason you will often see a hyphen in front of -ck on Phonics cards or in teacher’s manuals or writings about Phonics. The hyphen stands in for the rest of the word that would come before the -ck since -ck is only used at the end of words.

That’s it!

Use c to spell /k/ at the beginning of words before an a, o, u or any consonant.

Use k to spell /k/ at the beginning of words before an e, i, or y.

Use c to spell /k/ at the end of words following the short i sound.

Use k to spell /k/ at the end of words after a consonant or long vowel sound or in a silent e word.

Use -ck to spell /k/ at the end of one syllable words directly after a short vowel sound.

Please share how it goes teaching these rules to your learners! If you have specific questions I can help, with please comment below. If you find this post helpful in teaching your reader please like or comment below! Thanks for reading this, happy reading AND happy teaching!!

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Phonics, the base of it all!

By Audrea2 Comments
Yes, they did their own hair this day! They were SO excited to do Phonics together today!

Phonics is the first step that all of the oral work with language takes toward building a strong relationship with written language. The word phonics is based on the root phon or phone which means sound. You may remember from my post on Phonemic and Phonological Awareness that the suffix -ic means “having to do with or in regards to”. That means at its “root” (pun intended!!) Phonics just means having to do with sound. And that is what it is. It is teaching children what sounds each letter makes. ALL of the sounds each letter makes (long and short vowel sounds, soft and hard c and g sounds, or multiple sounds for a digraph). It is also what sounds different digraphs, trigraphs, quadgraphs, diphthongs, and vowel teams make.

Here is some more information about what each of those letter combinations are. Di-, tri- and quad graphs are just letter combinations that make a new/different sound. Di is a root that means two, so these are the two letter combinations of sh, ch, wh, and ph. Tri means three so that includes combinations like igh, tch, dge. Quad means four so that means a four letter combination like eigh. Diphthongs are vowel or vowel and consonant combinations that make a blended or new sound. Some examples of these are ou, ow, oi and oy. Vowel teams are two vowel combinations that follow the rule of “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and says its name”. The term vowel team is used for various combinations in different programs and trainings, but to me there are only 6 true vowel teams because they include only vowels and they follow the above rule. They are ea, ee, oe, oa, ai, and ie.

Once learners have mastered with BOTH accuracy and automaticity the sounds of the letters, they can start using their Phonemic Awareness skills to put those sounds together to sound out AND spell words. This is a key thing to remember. True phonics should include instruction in both decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) words. Learners do not have to have all the letter combinations mastered before starting to use phonics to read and spell. In fact they can begin using their Phonological skills to read and write as soon as they have mastered with accuracy and automaticity as few as two letter sounds like /a/ and /m/ or /o/ and /n/. As learners are working on and mastering their letter sounds they should be using them to read and write as soon as possible. Doing this will help their learning in two ways. First, it will help them see the value of what they are learning and help them remain engaged in the learning. Second, it will help ingrain their learning deeper as they practice applying their new knowledge in different ways.

This is essentially all that Phonics is. It is teaching learners explicitly the sounds that go with each letter symbol and then giving them as many and as varied opportunities to use/apply that information in BOTH reading and writing. There are just a few more things I would like to mention though, that strengthen a good phonics foundation.

One of those things is the rules that govern many of the sounds letters make. Although, typically these rules are more important for spelling, they do affect reading skills as well. One of the rules that affects reading is the type of syllable you are reading. A closed syllable (one that ends in a consonant) uses a short vowel sound. An open syllable (one that ends in a vowel) uses a long vowel sound. Recognizing and understanding this will help readers gain efficiency because they no longer have to try both vowel sounds, they can just read the correct sound the first try. There are between six and eight syllable types depending on the program you are using or learning from. Each of these syllable types gives specific information to help with reading and spelling. A strong foundation in Phonemic Awareness is again important here because it will allow children to know where words break between syllables. Other rules like an a says /o/ when it follows a w or comes before an l, help with both reading and spelling. Words like want are no longer just sight words, they are words that follow a specific rule. This is an example of how, although there are certainly exceptions to the rules in the English language, there are fewer than many of us think or thought, once we learn the rules that govern our language. I am only now starting to feel like I know about more of these rules than I don’t thanks to a mentor of mine who is a Dyslexia interventionist and whose original degree was not in teaching, but in English itself. It is vital that there is instruction in these rules that govern our language within Phonics instruction to ensure students can read AND spell unknown words based on rules and sounds, not just the words included in the lessons or weekly spelling list or the word list in the back of their decodable reader.

The other is the VITAL importance of teaching spelling as a part of Phonics instruction. Yes, this series of posts is about the pillars of Reading, but without using Phonics for spelling you are taking half of the equation and ability from the learners. Students will progress more quickly with reading the letter sounds they are being instructed in than they will in spelling them. However, once they have mastered letter sounds and practiced applying that knowledge in reading they need to be given the opportunity and expectation to use that same knowledge in writing/spelling. If they cannot use the known letter sounds correctly and consistently in spelling and writing, both scripted like a spelling test and free like journal writing, it should not be considered a mastered skill and more practice must be given.

Here are some things to remember about Phonics:

It is the explicit instruction of letter and letter combination sounds

It must include application practice in BOTH decoding/reading and encoding/spelling

It must include instruction and drill of the rules that govern which letter/letter combination sound OR letter/letter combination to use when spelling a sound (i.e. both ch and tch say /ch/, but are used in different words and places in words)

If you have any great tips to share about teaching Phonics to your students please share in the comments so that we can all learn from you! What has been your best resource for learning the rules that govern our language? What questions do you still have about Phonics? I look forward to hearing from you.