Brainy Kinesthetic Vowels Sounds

The English Language has 18 vowel sounds, but only 5 actual vowels. 

(I know, "sometimes Y", but Y doesn't have its own sound, it borrows from E and I.)  

Where do we start?  With the short vowel sounds! Why? Because close to 50% of the times those vowels are used, they make the short vowel sound.  

 

 

Unfortunately, the short vowel sounds are tough for the little ones to remember. The difference between the short e and the short i are pretty minuscule, but essential for encoding and decoding words.

I'm a teacher who needs to get the kids moving. I have all sorts of little tricks for the children to do to help them remember certain things, including vowel sounds.

When we practice short a, the children turn their body into an A shape, then "take off" saying ăăăăstronaut.

When practicing the short e sound, they turn into an E and say  ĕĕĕxercise!

The key word for the short i sound is insect.  The kids are always very creative hopping around the room as the letter I, saying  ĭ ĭ ĭnsect!

 

You guessed it, short o's key word is octopus.  Can you picture the little ones running around saying  ŏŏŏctoopus?  There's lots of giggling involved.

Finally, the short u sound is remembered when the children make the shape of a u, while holding an ŭŭŭmbrella.

I'm combining many of the ways that research shows brains remember: Getting involved physically, combining the physical with the auditory, and, of course, making it fun.  It takes some practice, but the little ones learn to identify those 5 sounds with those 5 letters.

Enjoy these brainy vowel sounds!

Random Tidbits About Our Language Reading Teachers Should Know

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a 4-day LETRS training session.  LETRS stands for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.  

The recent 4-day session was the second of three sessions. It's exhausting and overwhelming stuff, but it's amazing and quite valuable to know as a teacher of reading. Here are some interesting pieces of information I learned from some of the training.

1. Vowels are open, unconstricted sounds.  

The English Language has 18 vowel sounds: 5 short vowel sounds; 5 long vowel sounds; 3 r controlled vowels /er/ (spelled er, ir, or ur), /ar/, and /or/; diphthongs /oi/, /ow/; and the vowel teams /aw/, /oo/ (as in book) and /oo/ as in (as in pool).  This doesn't include the schwa sound, which takes on a short u or a short i sound in unaccented syllables.

2. Consonant sounds

The English Language has 25 consonant sounds:  /p/,/b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /f/, /v/, /th/ (unvoiced, as in three), /th/ (voiced, as in those), /s/, /z/, /sh/, /zh/ (as in pleasure), /ch/, /j/, /y/, /wh/, /w/, /h/, /l/, and /r/.

3. Short vowel sounds

Fifty percent of words have short vowel sounds.

4. Predictable

The English language isn't as unpredictable as people think:

• 50% of words are predictable by rule
• 36% of words are predictable by rule with 1 error, usually a vowel
• 10% of words will be predictable with morphology and word origin taken into account
• Fewer than 4% of words are true oddities.

This is just the beginning of what I've learned from this training. 

See also THIS POST.