Sequence of Phonics Instruction – Part IV
Phonics relies on letter-sound relationships to teach children to identify words. When teaching phonics begin with the easy relationships and then move along to the more complex letter-sound relationships.
For more information about phonics, please visit our series of phonics posts noted below:
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Consonants, short vowels and word families, e.g. VC and CVC |
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Digraphs, blends and more word families, e.g., CVCC, CCVC and CCVCC |
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Vowel relationships, specifically magic E, vowel teams and their exceptions |
This post will focus on the remaining relationships that exist among vowels. Our language uses six letters (a, e, i, o, u, & y) to create over fifteen vowel sounds.
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R – Control
We like to refer to this letter-sound relationship as the Bossy R. When a vowel precedes the letter “r”, it sounds different. The following are great examples:
Bossy R Short Vowel Sounds
car cat her hen sir sit for fog fur fun The following table provides additional examples of R-control or bossy R words.
Letters Examples ar card, part, dark, shark, jar, far, arm, farm, star, hard, yard, barn, harp, bark, start, yarn, cart, sharp & smart er herd, fern, stern, sister, winter, upper, better, hammer, dinner, summer & bitter ir fir, first, birch, girl, bird, dirt, twirl, birth & shirt or born, corn, horn, pork, fork, sort, sport, short, form, north & storm ur burn, churn, turn, surf, turf & church In addition, the combination of the letters “air” and “are” often make the /er/ sound, e.g. fair, bare.
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Y Rules
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Vowel Diphthongs
A vowel diphthong makes one sound but uses two letters, it moves from one sound to the next, e.g. the “oy” sound in toy.
Letters Sounds Examples Letters Sounds Examples oi /oi/ boil, coin oy /oi/ boy, toy ou /ou/ cloud, pound ow /ou/ how, crown au /aw/ launch, haunt aw /aw/ saw, draw The letter combinations, “al”, “augh” and “ough” and the letter “o” can also make the /aw/ sound, e.g. also, caught, bought and off. It is no wonder that the English language is one of the hardest to read.
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Long and Short Double O Vowel Sounds
Introduce the following sound / letter relationships.
Letter/s Sound Examples oo Long Double O too, zoo, food, spoon, roof, moon u Long Double O
June, truth, crude, tune, flute, tubeoo Short Double O
book, foot, good, look, took, woodu Short Double O
full, pull, put, push, bush, bully -
Schwa
According to the dictionary, schwa is the sound of an unaccented vowel. Say what? Clearly an example is needed to convey this meaning. The word, America, contains the schwa sounds (short u) in both the first and last vowels.
Letters Examples a about, above, ago, alone, away, another, again e effect, item, diet, even, label, often o other, second, money, mother, nation, onion The letters “i” and “u” can also produce the schwa sounds, e.g. pencil, holiday and circus.
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Other Vowel Spelling
Introduce the following sound / letter relationships.
Letter Sound Examples igh Long i high, thigh, fight, knight, bright
Using the words above, compare and contrast each word to demonstrate both the open and closed syllable rule. If needed, prior to beginning this exercise review both the long and short vowel sounds. Say and show the word, bet. Then remove the letter “t” and say the new word, be.
When the letter “y” is found at the end of a one syllable word, it makes a long /i/ sound, e.g., by, my, cry, fly, sky, try & why.
When the letter “y” is found at the end of a two syllable word, it makes the long /e/ sound, e.g., baby, lady, candy, daddy, funny, puppy, penny & safety.
It is more common to find the letter “y” being used as a vowel. Typically, when the letter “y” is at the beginning of a word it is a consonant. However, if the letter “y” is located in the medial or end of a word it is often treated as a vowel. Interestingly, when a vowel precedes the letter “y”, it often makes the “y” silent, e.g. day & key.
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my, cycle | ||
shady, bunny | ||
yes, yarn |
The English language uses six letters to make over fifteen sounds. Due to the many complexities of phonics instruction, it generally takes a child a few years to obtain a solid foundation of letter-sound relationships when learning to read.
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