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Science of Reading is the body of research that include developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. The article mentions that Phonics instruction systematically, explicitly, and cumulatively is key to successful reading instruction. The five key elements to reading instruction are:
-comprehension
- fluency
-vocabulary
-Phonics
-Phonemic Awareness
The three elements you need for effective phonics instruction are:
-Hands-On approach
-moving from presentation to practice
-showing direct application to reading and spelling

What is the science of reading? Really Great Reading. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2023, from https://www.reallygreatreading.com/what-is-the-science-of-reading-and-phonics

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https://youtu.be/70sAvpUFHGw

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The Science of Reading: Defining Movement - A preamble by Dr. Tracy Weeden

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Phonics is the system of phoneme-grapheme correspondences that are the basic structure of an alphabetic orthography. Phonics teaches common letter-sound relationships including sounds for common letter patterns. There are 8 different phonic patterns: phoneme, grapheme, onset, rime, digraph, vowel digraph, schwa, morpheme.
https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101-course/modules/phonics/phonics-practice

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https://youtu.be/tKsIi1MH4lw
This video shows kids both letters and sounds. It also provides two words and sounds out the beginning sounds of each word.

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ABC Phonics Song with Sounds for Children - Alphabet Song with Two Words for Each Letter

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The Science of Reading proves that Phonic instruction is one of the key elements in successful reading instruction. It helps improve comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, phonics, and Phonemic Awareness. The article also mentions that Phonic instruction has benefitted all students, including students who struggle with reading. Phonics also help expose students to words they have never encountered before. Phonics education should build automaticity in matching graphemes to phonemes. An example the article provides is a closed syllable. A closed syllable has only one vowel and is followed by one or more consonants.

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Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of individual speech sounds or phonemes. Phonemic Awareness consist of several skills:
-Categorizing
-Blending
-Segmenting
-Adding phonemes
-Deleting phonemes
-Substituting phonemes
-Reverse phonemes
https://heggerty.org/resources/blog-post/phonological-awareness-and-phonemic-awareness/

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When we talk about foundations of literacy, three "PH" words often come to mind: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. We see these terms when we view grade level reading standards, reading research, and built into reading lessons found in many core reading series. Both phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are oral and auditory, and the focus is on the sounds in words. Phonics, on the other hand, focuses on the letters that the sounds represent. Phonics involves print, phonological, and phonemic awareness do not. While phonological and phonemic awareness are both oral and auditory, there are differences between these two terms.

What is Phonological Awareness?

"Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language can be divided into smaller components and manipulated." (Chard and Dickson, 1999) Phonological awareness refers to the bigger "chunks" or "parts" of language. When we ask students to rhyme, blend small words to make a compound word, break words apart into syllables or onset-rime, we are working at the phonological awareness level. Phonological awareness can be thought of as a big umbrella with the bigger "chunks" of language being the top of the umbrella.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made of individual sounds called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound we hear in a word. Phonemic awareness falls underneath the umbrella as a sub-category of phonological awareness. Rather than working with larger units of spoken language, we ask students to listen for the individual sounds or phonemes in a spoken word. When we ask students to blend or segment words into the smallest unit of sound they hear, we are working at the phonemic awareness level. For example, the four sounds /p//l//a//n/ can be blended to make the whole word plan.

How Does Phonemic Awareness Help Reading and Literacy Development?

In their book, "Know Better, Do Better", David and Meredith Liben state "It is not an option to skip or shortchange phonemic awareness! Children without mastery of it will inevitably struggle." While decades of research support this statement, phonemic awareness is still the most common reason students struggle with word reading. When educators consider phonemic awareness and phonics to be interchangeable terms, phonemic awareness is often left out of instruction and the focus shifts to print with phonics.

Failing to provide explicit phonemic awareness instruction leads to many students lacking the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds. Instead, they get the message that words are whole units that need to be visually memorized. While students learn language naturally by listening to speech and words, hearing individual sounds in words is not natural. We don't speak in individual sounds, instead, our speech is co-articulated and we hear whole words in oral language. If we begin our literacy instruction by teaching letters and sounds, without phonemic awareness instruction, phonics does not make sense to students.

Phonemic awareness and phonics do work together when students learn to read and spell. Words are made up of sounds (phonemic awareness) and letters represent these sounds in print (phonics). Without the ability to hear sounds in words, phonemic awareness and phonics cannot engage in this reciprocal relationship. Researcher Wiley Blevins explains, "Phonemic awareness training provides the foundation on which phonics instruction is built. Thus, children need solid phonemic awareness training for phonics instruction to be effective."

It is essential for students to understand that words are made up of individual sounds, and they can blend, segment, and manipulate those sounds. If students can do this work through the air, we can transfer these skills to print, so they can read and spell more words.

How Does Phonological Awareness Develop?

It is important to support and scaffold students through the continuum of phonological awareness to allow them to eventually hear and manipulate those individual sounds in words- the phonemic awareness level. The image of the ladder below shows the continuum of phonological awareness. When providing instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness, we begin at the phonological level. It is much easier to hear the bigger units of language versus the individual sounds in a word. For example, asking children to segment pencil into two-syllables, /pen/ /cil/, is an easier task when compared to segmenting the word pen into three individual sounds, /p/ /e/ /n/.

The largest unit of language is a word. Instruction in phonological awareness begins at the word level when children learn that compound words can be blended, segmented, and manipulated. For example, we can blend the small words class - room together to the compound word classroom. Or the opposite, we can segment compound words into two separate words. We can say the whole word and take it apart into two smaller words: raincoat, rain - coat. We can also substitute one small word in a compound word. Say sunshine, change shine to glasses and the word is sunglasses.

Once students can blend, segment, and manipulate compound words, we narrow the unit of language they hear and do the same work with syllables. For example, we blend the three syllables /cal - en - dar/, to say the whole word calendar. Students can segment a word into syllables: elbow can be segmented into /el/ - /bow/. We can substitute a syllable in a word to make a new word: reading; change /read/ to /talk/ and the word is talking.

We can narrow the unit of language again when we focus on the onset and rime. Onset-rime is breaking apart a syllable. The onset of a word is all the sounds that come before the vowel and the rime is the vowel and all the sounds after. Students blend the onset and rime into a whole word or segment a spoken word into the onset and rime.

For example, students can blend the onset /b/ and the rime /ig/ into the word /b-ig/, big. And if we were to segment the word flip, the onset would be /fl/ and the rime would be /ip/. Onset-rime is the last level of phonological awareness and teaches students to blend and segment two parts into a word. Developing a foundation of understanding in phonological awareness prepares students to hear individual sounds and develop phoneme awareness. The chart below shares examples of tasks and activities at the phonological awareness level

Phonological Awareness Activities

How Does Phonemic Awareness Develop?

When looking at the image of the ladder, the first three rungs on the ladder are phonological awareness and the top rung on the ladder is phonemic awareness. The focus is on hearing individual sounds in spoken words. While instruction begins with phonological awareness, our end goal is phonemic awareness. Students who are phonemically aware are not only able to hear the sounds in words, they are able to isolate the sounds, blend, segment and manipulate sounds in spoken words.

For example, segmenting the word pen into the sounds /p/ /e/ /n/ is an example of a phonemic awareness task. If students can segment the word, they can then spell the word. If they can blend those sounds, they can read the word. Additionally, if students can substitute the /p/ to a /h/, they can make a new word - hen. Phonemic awareness training provides students with the skills necessary to read and spell words when they see these sounds in print.

There are several skills included in phonemic awareness instruction and the chart below shares examples of skills and tasks at the phonemic awareness level.

Phonemic Awareness Activities

Phoneme Isolation

Phoneme isolation is a skill where students hear and isolate a sound at the beginning of a word, middle of a word, and end of a word, often referred to as initial, medial, and final sounds.

The first sound in the word name is /n/.

The final sound in the word bark is /k/.
The medial or vowel sound in the word cup is /u/.

Blending (parts to whole)

Blending is a skill that directly correlates to phonic decoding. Students hear sounds spoken aloud and they blend the sounds to make a word. During instruction, the teacher provides the phonemes and the students blend the phonemes into a whole word.

/s/ /u/ /n/, sun

/b/ /r/ /ā/ /k/, break
/p/ /r/ /i/ /s/, price

Segment (whole to parts)

Segmenting is a skill that directly correlates to encoding or spelling. Students hear a whole word and they segment the word into all the individual sounds they hear. During instruction, a teacher would say a whole word and students segment the word into individual phonemes.

Phoneme Manipulation:

Add

Delete
Substitute
Phoneme manipulation is practiced with adding a phoneme, deleting a phoneme, or substituting a phoneme in spoken words.

Adding an initial sound to make a word: Add /s/ to /-at/ and the word is sat

Deleting an initial sound from a word: Say cup. Without /k/, what's left is, /-up/.

Substituting an initial sound: The word is top. Change /t/ to /m/and the word is, mop.

How Do You Teach Phonological and Phonemic Awareness?

Considering the research and the role phonemic awareness plays in building the foundation of reading, it is clear we owe it to our students to do better. All students benefit from explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness. In most literacy curricula, the amount of time dedicated to phonemic awareness, and the way it is presented, is not effective enough to create phonemically proficient readers. Often just a few minutes are devoted to this instruction, with varying skills taught each day. If we are going to do better for students, our instruction in phonemic awareness needs to be intentional.

For our younger learners, we should begin instruction at the phonological awareness level (compound words, syllables, onset-rime) to allow students the opportunity to blend, segment, and manipulate parts of words first before we have them do that same work with phonemes. With older learners, or struggling readers, our goal is to get to the phoneme level as quickly as possible so they can transfer these skills to reading and spelling.

Phonological and phonemic awareness skills can be divided into 3 levels: early, basic, and advanced. In the past, many educators thought the basic skills of blending and segmenting were enough to create proficient readers as these skills directly corelate to decoding and encoding. However, we now know that providing phonemic awareness instruction to the advanced level is critical.

Phonemic awareness instruction is powerful, but it does not need to take long. Dr. Heggerty created quick, 10-12 minutes lessons to provide students with the practice and repetition they needed to reach phoneme proficiency. Our lessons include all 8 phonological and phonemic awareness skills beginning with compound words and working our way to the phoneme level. Teaching these skills each day will allow our children the repetition and practice they need to hear, blend, segment and manipulate sounds in words.

How Do You Assess Phonological and Phonemic Awareness?

We can assess students' phonemic awareness in many ways. Universal screeners, such as DIBELS or Acadience, assess some skills and can be an indicator that we need to "dig deeper" or learn more about certain students. Other assessments include the PAST or our Heggerty Phonemic Awareness assessments which provide more information by assessing more skills.

Because phonemic awareness is oral and auditory, assessments are completed one-on-one and can be time consuming to administer. A quick and effective way to check in on students' phonemic awareness is listening to their responses during instruction. You can rotate rows when students are sitting on the carpet and have a focus group each week. Once students know most of their letters and sounds, looking at their writing will show you what sounds they are hearing in words as they map those sounds to print. Similarly, listening to students sound out or decode words is a way to assess their ability to blend sounds into words

The Foundation for Literacy Development

In her blog post Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About Louisa Moats notes that, "Perhaps the most critical and least-practiced component of effective early instruction is phoneme awareness. Awareness of the sounds that make up spoken words, facility at manipulating those sounds, and the links between speech and print must be mastered for students to be fluent readers and accurate spellers of an alphabetic writing system like ours."

Both phonological and phonemic awareness focus on the sounds in language. We begin our instruction at the phonological level and narrow the unit of language until we can work at the phoneme level. focuses on teaching students to hear the specific sounds in words and is essential for literacy instruction.

It is important for students to be explicitly taught how to hear sounds in words to help them blend, segment, and manipulate those sounds. When a student has phoneme proficiency, they are able to transfer the oral and auditory skills to print to be able to read and spell words. Phonemic awareness is the necessary foundation for creating proficient readers and writers.

References:

Liben, David & Liben, MeredithKnow Better, Do Better. LIteracy Solutions, 2019.

Blevins, Wiley. Phonics from A to Z. 2017

Moats, Louisa. Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About, Oct 16, 2019

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What are Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness?

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When we talk about foundations of literacy, three "PH" words often come to mind: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. We see these terms when...

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Students are to grab the sheet of paper and 3 chips they can move up. The student looks at the picture on the paper. Each paper has a picture that has three sounds. The student is to move up each chip with the sounds of the word.
For example: There is a picture of a cat on the page. the student would move each chip to each sound. (C-A-T)

http://fcrr.fsu.acsitefactory.com/sites/g/files/upcbnu2836/files/media/PDFs/student_center_activities/k1_phonological_awareness/k1_phoneme_segmenting/k1_pa040_say_and_slide_phonemes.pdf

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Phonemic Awareness helps students understand that words are made of sounds or phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest segment of speech. phonemic awareness consist of many components:
-Isolating
-Categorizing
-Segmenting
-Adding/deleting phonemes
-Substituting phonemes
-Reverse Phonemes
this whole process is auditory, which means that students do not have to write. This helps students understand that all letters have sounds that make words. Teachers spend lots of time of this because there are 44 phonemes and only 26 letters in the alphabet. They believe that phonemic awareness helps students engage with written language so they can learn to read and write.

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Phonological Awareness is the overall awareness of the sounds in spoken language. By knowing phonological awareness, students have the ability to recognize and manipulate spoken parts of words. They also have the ability to think about and recognize larger chunks of words.
https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101-course/modules/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness-introduction

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Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness - and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics.

Letter of completion

After completing this module and successfully answering the post-test questions, you'll be able to download a Letter of Completion.

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what's the difference?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and blending and segmenting onset-rimes. The most sophisticated - and last to develop - is called phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.

Phonological awareness (PA) involves a continuum of skills that develop over time and that are crucial for reading and spelling success, because they are central to learning to decode and spell printed words. Phonological awareness is especially important at the earliest stages of reading development - in pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade for typical readers.

Explicit teaching of phonological awareness in these early years can eliminate future reading problems for many students. However, struggling decoders of any age can work on phonological awareness, especially if they evidence problems in blending or segmenting phonemes.

How about phonological awareness and phonics?

Phonological awareness refers to a global awareness of sounds in spoken words, as well as the ability to manipulate those sounds.

Phonics refers to knowledge of letter sounds and the ability to apply that knowledge in decoding unfamiliar printed words.

So, phonological awareness refers to oral language and phonics refers to print. Both of these skills are very important and tend to interact in reading development, but they are distinct skills; children can have weaknesses in one of them but not the other.

For example, a child who knows letter sounds but cannot blend the sounds to form the whole word has a phonological awareness (specifically, a phonemic awareness) problem. Conversely, a child who can orally blend sounds with ease but mixes up vowel letter sounds, reading pit for pet and set for sit, has a phonics problem.

44 phonemes

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet that make up 44 speech sounds, or phonemes.

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Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness - and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics. Letter of completion After completing this module and successfully answering the post-test questions, you'll be able to download a Letter of Completion. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what's the difference?

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Students are to guess the onset and rime of each word without looking at the actual picture. They will begin this activity by getting into pairs and taking turns telling each other clues to figure out the onset and rime of their word.

http://fcrr.fsu.acsitefactory.com/sites/g/files/upcbnu2836/files/media/PDFs/student_center_activities/k1_phonological_awareness/k1_onset_and_rime/k1_pa024_guessing_game.pdf

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These are helpful ways to use phonological awareness to help students who are struggling readers.

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Phonological Awareness is the ability to work with sounds in words. Phonological awareness can be used with both kids who read on grade level, and kids who are struggling readers. Students should be able to recognize, and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Phonemic awareness is part of phonological awareness because in order to recognize and manipulate words, students must be able to know the individual sounds or phonemes in spoken words.

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https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101-course/modules/phonics/phonics-practice

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Phonics is a method for teaching students how to read. During phonics time, students make a connection between letters and sounds. The goal of Phonics is to get children to understand the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken words. This also helps children recognize words and unfamiliar words in order to get them to be able to read fluently.

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Phonics (complex consonants) is the sound of two constonant letters that are combined to make a single sound. An example of a complex constant would be 'Sp' like in Spunk or Space. The S and the P come together to make a single sound.

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https://youtu.be/N8f4ygE2djA

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How to Teach Kids Complex Consonant Blends

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teacherspayteachers.com%2FProduct%2FWriting-Blends-Anchor-Chart-3228644&psig=AOvVaw2iM9O1n1cqMK84ru8mFcAe&ust=1680388374205000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCNi9wdach_4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

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There are different types of blends and digraphs when it comes to complex consonants. Students must understand the different between digraphs and blends. Blends are letters that are put together in a syllable that, when sounded, they form a consonant blend. ex.(blue). Digraphs is the combination of two letters that make a completely different sound when they are put together. ex. (chat).

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There are 5 vowels in the English alphabet. They are A,E,I,O, and U. These 5 letters are included in different ways in almost every word in the English language. Vowels have 2 sounds. They can make a short vowel sound and a long vowel sound. There are some words that have two vowels combined blend to make a whole new sound.
https://www.soundcityreading.net/understanding-vowels.html

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The Sound City Reading program teaches the vowels and vowel patterns one at a time so that students can become very familiar with one pattern before going on to the next. Patterns that are similar are taught one after the other, so that students can see the similarities between them.

Students practice saying the vowel sounds they have learned from sound charts and flashcards daily. They also write vowel patterns they have learned, given the sounds. When learning a new pattern, students spell and read words with the pattern. This step by step process makes learning the vowels much easier.

The vowels in the English language are a, e, i, o, and u. In some words the letter y acts as vowel.

English has incorporated many words from other languages. This has brought in a variety of vowel patterns. It is why there are so many patterns to learn.

Vowel sounds are different from consonant sounds. You always pronounce a vowel sound with your mouth open. You adjust the shape of your mouth to create the vowel sounds.

Many of the vowel sounds can be shown with more than one pattern. Example: saw, Paul.

In some cases, a single pattern can show different sounds in different words. Example: eat, head, steak.

Each vowel has two main sounds, the short sound and the long sound. These terms do not mean that the letters themselves are shorter or longer, and it does not mean that the sounds are shorter or longer. They are just the common terms used to indicate the two different sounds.

The long vowel sound is the same as the name of the vowel.

On some of the vowel charts, the sounds for the vowels and vowel patterns are shown using sound pictures from A Sound Story About Audrey And Brad. These charts should be used first with the students.

Some of the vowel charts have key words and pictures. You can hear each vowel or vowel pattern by saying the key words. Being able to pick out the sound from a key word is more difficult. These charts should only be used after students have studied the charts with sound pictures for a period of time.

Vowel patterns are grouped with other similar patterns when they are taught. For example, all of the long vowel patterns are taught close together. This helps students understand the patterns and remember them more easily.

Do not be discouraged if you read about the vowel patterns and they seem complicated. There is a logic to the system and it will make more sense as you go through the program. In this program the students are taught one pattern at a time, and you will learn with them. Each pattern is taught thoroughly before going on to the next. After students practice reading and spelling words with a new pattern, they will soon be able to use the pattern without having to think about it. It will become second nature.

In some books, the vowels are printed in color. There is a specific color for each vowel sound. This helps the vowels and vowel patterns stand out in words, so that students will recognize them and be able to distinguish between consonants and vowels in words. For multi-letter vowels, students will be able to see which letters work together to show the vowel sound. Students will quickly be able to see which patterns sound the same, because the colors will be the same. They will also be able to see when vowel patterns have different sounds, because they will be printed in different colors. There are fifteen different colors used. Fourteen of these colors represent sounds. The colors for the short and long vowel sounds are related. For each vowel, the long sound is shown in a dark color, and the short vowel sound is shown in a lighter version of the same color.

​To see and hear all of the vowel patterns and sounds in this program, click on VIDEO in the menu. Then click on Advanced Phonics Patterns. You will be able to see videos showing all of the vowel patterns, both beginning and advanced, and hear them pronounced. You will be able to see all of the consonant patterns as well.

Even though there are only five vowel letters, there are many different vowel sounds. You can hear each vowel sound when you pronounce the key words shown below. And you can see the vowels and their sounds on the chart below. The vowel sounds, along with the consonant sounds, are introduced in A Sound Story About Audrey And Brad. Part one of the story introduces the short vowel sounds and the long i sound. Part two introduces the rest of the vowel sounds. Click on AUDIO in the menu to hear the sound story read aloud.

What Vowel Sounds Are Taught?

1. Five short vowel sounds: a/ax, e/egg, i/in, o/ox, u/up (No marks are placed over short vowels in this program. This reduces confusion. Students learn to read words with short vowels first, so there is no need for a mark. In a few words, the letter y shows the short i sound.)

2. Five long vowel sounds: a/apron, e/begin, i/lilac, o/robot, u/music (When you say the name of these vowels, you are pronouncing the long vowel sound. When they are introduced, they are shown with a straight line above them. This helps students distinguish long vowels from short vowels. The line is called a macron. The letter y sometimes shows the long i or the long e sound.)

3. Three dotted vowel sounds: a/all, o/to, u/bush (Two dots are placed above these vowels when they are introduced in the teaching materials. The symbol is a German umlaut, which means "not the usual sound.") Two more dotted vowels, e/ballet and i/pizza, steal the long a and long i sounds. Note: In books with color-coded vowels, the o/to sound is printed in the same color as the long u sound, dark blue, because they are almost the same sound.

4. Two diphthongs: oi/coin and oy/boy, ou/ouch and ow/cow (The oi and oy patterns have exactly the same sound. Likewise, the ou and ow patterns have the same sound. When you pronounce a diphthong, you change the position of your mouth as you say the sound.) In this program these patterns and a few others are called "Odd O" patterns, because they don't represent the sound that you would expect. The sounds for Odd O patterns must be memorized.

5. Vowels followed by the letter r make up a special category, called R-controlled vowels. In many words, the R-controlled vowel is not pronounced at all, as in er/her, i/bird, and ur/turtle. These vowel patterns are printed with the color gray.

Vowels followed by the letter r make up a special category, called R-controlled vowels. The letter r affects the sound of the vowel. ​ In the ar/car pattern, the letter a has the short o sound, so these patterns are printed with the short o color, light orange. In the or/horse pattern, the vowel o has the long o sound, so these patterns are printed with the long o color, dark orange. In many words, the R-controlled vowel is not pronounced at all, as in er/her, i/bird, and ur/turtle. These vowel patterns are printed with the color gray.
Closed And Open Syllables - Understanding When To Use Short And Long Vowel Sounds
Syllables are rhythmic units in words. Each syllable contains a vowel sound. Most syllables also contain consonant sounds. ​

1. When you see a word or syllable​​ that has a single vowel followed by one or more consonants, use the short vowel sound. This is called a closed syllable. Examples: up, ill, can, slot, rest, rob-in, rab-bit, fan-tas-tic.

2. When you see a word or syllable that has a single vowel at the end of the syllable, use the long vowel sound. This is called an open syllable. Examples: go, no, he, she, we, flu. Examples with the first syllable open: ra-ven, be-gin, li-lac, ro-bot, mu-sic. Examples with the second syllable open: hip-po, ban-jo, men-u, kud-zu.

Accented And Unaccented Syllables
In many words, one syllable is pronounced more forcefully than the other syllables. This type of syllable is called an accented syllable. In accented syllables, the vowel sound is usually pronounced as you would expect. Examples: pi-lot, cab-in, com- pare, re- port.
​
In some words, one of the syllables is not pronounced as forcefully as the other syllables. This type of syllable is called an unaccented syllable. In unaccented syllables, the vowel is hardly pronounced at all. When you read an unaccented syllable, you go from the consonant before the vowel to the consonant after the vowel, sliding past the vowel without pronouncing it. In practice, the skipped vowel sound like a very slight "uh" or "i" sound. This is called the schwa sound. Examples: pi- lot, cab- in, com-pare, en- ve-lope. In this program, a curved arrow is placed under a vowel if it has the schwa sound. It points from one consonant to the next, skipping the vowel.
There Are Many Ways To Show Long Vowel Sounds
Long vowel sounds can be shown in four different ways.

1. A single vowel is at the end of a syllable.

2. Two vowels work together to show one long vowel sound. Pronounce the long sound for the first vowel. Do not pronounce the second vowel. We say, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking."

3. Two vowels work together to show one long vowel sound, but they are separated by a consonant. We call this a "split vowel" pattern. The second vowel is always the letter e. Pronounce the long sound for the first vowel, Do not pronounce the second vowel. Even though the vowels are separated, we still say, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." When teaching these patterns, show students how to draw a bracket below the pattern, starting at the first vowel and ending at the second vowel, to draw attention to the fact that the vowels work together.

4. A vowel is followed by one or more consonants. We call this a "follow the leader" pattern. The vowel gets to say its name because it goes first. (These patterns must be memorized, because in most words a single vowel followed by one or more consonants represents its short vowel sound: last, went, wisp, soft, jump.)

You have seen that single vowels at the end of a syllable show the long vowel sound. There are many two-letter patterns that can also show long vowel sounds. The letters in these patterns work together to represent just one sound. With a few exceptions, these vowel pairs can appear anyplace in words. For example, the ee pattern appears at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of these words: eel, s eed, b ee. Notice that in these patterns the first vowel "says its name" (its long vowel sound), and the second vowel is not pronounced. We can say that the "first one does the talking (says its sound), and the second one does the walking (has to be quiet)."

1. Long A Patterns: ai/rain, ay/play

2. Long E Patterns: ee/feet, ei/weird, ey/key, ea/eat

3. Long I Patterns: ie/pie

4. Long O Patterns: oa/boat, oe/toe

5. Long U Patterns: ue/cue

There are also five vowel pairs that are separated by a consonant. We call these "split" vowel pairs. Even though they are not right beside each other, they still represent the long vowel sound. Like the other vowel pairs, the first vowel is pronounced as the long vowel sound, and the second vowel is not pronounced. These vowels are trickier to learn because the student has to look at the first vowel and then look past the consonant to see the second vowel.

1. Long A: a_e/safe

2. Long E: e_e/these

3. Long I: i_e/pine

4. Long O: o_e/home

5. Long U: u_e/cube

Some long vowel patterns are made up of a vowel followed by two consonants.

1. Long I: igh/night, ind/find, ild/child

2. Long O: old/gold, olt/bolt, oll/troll, olk/yolk

In this program, vowel sounds that are neither long nor short are classified as dotted vowel sounds. Sometimes these sounds are represent by single vowels, sometimes they are represented by vowel pairs, and sometimes they are represented by vowel-consonant combinations.

Dotted vowels are shown with two dots above them. The two dots are called an umlaut. It means "not the usual sound."

Sometimes single vowels have dotted sounds. Examples: bush, to, pizza.

Sometimes dotted vowel sounds are shown by a vowel-vowel combination. Examples: Paul, veil, moon, book.

Sometimes dotted vowel sounds are part of vowel-consonant combinations. Examples: ball, wasp, sleigh, could.

You can hear the sounds for the dotted vowels in these words.
​
​Dotted A: a/all
Dotted E: e/ballet (Sounds like the long a sound.)
Dotted I: i/pizza (Sounds like the long e sound.)
Dotted O: o/to
Dotted U: u/bush

These are the patterns that have dotted vowel sounds.

R-Controlled Vowel Sounds

If the letter r follows a vowel, it usually affects its sound. This type of pattern is called an R-controlled vowel pattern. It is also know as a "Bossy R" pattern. We say that the letter R likes to be the boss and tell the vowel which sound to use. The vowel sound in an R-controlled pattern may be long or short, or the vowel may not be pronounced all. Some of the r-controlled patterns can be pronounced in more than one way. In some cases the position of the pattern in the word affects how it is pronounced.

1. Bossy R with A: ar/car, ar/dollar, ar/carrot

2. Bossy R with E: er/her, er/heron

3. Bossy R with I: ir/bird

4. Bossy R with O: or/horse, or/tractor, or/sorry

5. Bossy R with U: ur/turtle

There are three other R-Controlled patterns.

The R-Controlled vowels are not all taught at the same time. The or/horse pattern is taught in Book 1. The rest of the most common patterns are taught in Book 5. The remaining patterns are taught in Book 6.

There are six different patterns in which a vowel can show the short u sound for no apparent reason. In this program, these patterns are called "umbrella" vowels. In the student books, an umbrella is placed above each pattern when it is introduced to remind students to say the short u sound (heard at the beginning of the word umbrella) for that pattern. Read "A Story About The Umbrella Vowels" to the students as a simple way to explain this concept.

The letter y is sometimes used as a consonant and sometimes used as a vowel.

1. y/yo-yo - Y is used as a consonant: yo-yo, yes, year, you

2. y/happy - Y is used as a vowel when it is at the end of the last syllable in a multisyllable word. It represents the long e​ sound: hap-py, fun-ny, po-ny, fam-i-ly.

3. y/my - Y is used as a vowel when it is the only vowel in a one-syllable word and it appears at the end of the word. It represents the long ​i sound: my, by, try, sky.

4. The ye and y_e patterns show the long i sound.

5. y/gymnastics - Y sometimes represents the short i sound in words: gym, myth, symbol, bicycle. This pattern is shown on the "Shady Short Vowel" chart.

There are three short vowel patterns that do not follow the rules. In this program we call them "shady" short vowels. The word "shady" tells us that these vowels are trying to trick us. The chart for these patterns is shown below.

1. The ea/head pattern has the short e sound instead of the long e sound in some words. It is printed in the same light green color as short e.

2. In the a/father pattern the a is pronounced like a short o sound. It is printed in the same light orange color as short o.

3. In the y/gymnastics pattern the y is pronounced like short i. It is printed in the same light violet color as short i.

In several situations, the letter e is not pronounced at all. We can say it is a "silent e." When teaching these patterns, place a small x above the e to remind students that it is not pronounced.
​

1. Some multi-syllable words end with a "silent e" syllable: ap-ple, bot-tle, sim-ple. All syllables must have at least one vowel, so the letter e is included at the end of the second syllable. However, it is not pronounced.

2. The letter v is not used at the end of English words. The letter pattern _ve is used to show the /v/ sound at the end of words: give, have, carve, serve. The e​ in this pattern is not pronounced.

3. The _se and _ze patterns are used to show the /s/ or /z/ sound at the end of some words. They are used after a two-letter vowel pattern: mou se, hor se, noi se, moo se, free ze, snoo ze, mai ze. The e at the end of the words is not pronounced. The _se pattern can have the /s/ or /z/ sound. The _ze pattern has the /z/ sound.

4. The _ce pattern is sometimes used at the end of words to show the /s/ sound: fence, chance, force, choice, fleece. The e at the end is not pronounced.

5. The _ge pattern is sometimes used at the end of words to show the /j/ sound: change, fringe, gorge, bulge.The e at the end is not pronounced.

6. In "Vowel-Consonant-E" patterns, two vowels work together to show a single sound, but the vowels are separated by a consonant: safe, these, pine, home, flute, cube. The first vowel is pronounced as its long vowel sound. The second vowel is always the letter e and it is not pronounced.

These patterns all begin with the letter o. Most of them do not show the sound you would expect. The sounds for these patterns must be memorized. Some of these patterns can represent more than one sound.

When the letter r follows a vowel, it affects its sound. The vowel and the letter r are pronounced as a unit. When you see an r-controlled vowel, you can't pronounce the vowel in the expected way. You have to learn the sound for each pattern individually. In some bossy r patterns, you only hear the /r/ sound; you don't hear the vowel at all. In other patterns the vowel is heard but it may not be the sound you would expect.

The letter y acts as a vowel in some words. It can represent three different vowel sounds.

1. y = long i sound my, by, try, sky, python, myself At the end of a one syllable word or the end of a first syllable

2. y = long e sound happy, funny, empty, family At the end of a multi-syllable word

3. y = short i sound gymnastics, lynx, cylinder, pyramid In the middle of a syllable

The patterns ye and y_e also represent vowel sounds.
​

1. ye = long i sound rye, dye, lye, bye

2. y_e = long i sound type, style, rhyme

The consonants y and w can serve as the second vowel in a vowel team, as in oy/boy, ay/play, ow/cow, and aw/saw.

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The Sound City Reading program teaches the vowels and vowel patterns one at a time so that students can become very familiar with one pattern before going on to the next. Patterns that are similar are taught one after the other, so that students can see the similarities between them.

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https://fcrr.org/sites/g/files/upcbnu2836/files/media/PDFs/student_center_activities/k1_phonics/k1_variant_correspondences/k1_p049_vowel_slide.pdf

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Vowels are 5 graphemes in the American alphabet that make more than one sound on their own. There is at least one vowel in almost every word in the American language. There can be more than one vowel in a word as well. That is called a vowel digraph.

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What are the syllable types and their meanings?

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What are the syllable types and their meanings?

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There are 6 syllable types in the English language. They are called Closed, Open,Vowel consonant silent-E, Vowel Digraph, and Consonant -Le. by breaking apart a word into parts the student can identify the sounds by referring back to the syllable types, and be able to sound out that word part. When they are able to sounds out each of the word parts they can eventually put the parts together and sounds out the whole word.

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https://youtu.be/zIpungaJ0SU

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By teaching syllables types, it helps students chuck longer words into manageable parts that they are able to read. This way when looking at the word part the student can identify whether the vowel sound in that syllable is either long or short. It could also help them identify any sort of diphthong, digraph, or an ending has been added to the word and gives it a different sound.

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Morphology is the study of meaningful units of language and how they are combined in word formation. During Morphological Awareness means to explicitly think about the smallest unit of meaning in language. When determining how many Morphemes are found in a word, it is important to pay attention to the free Morphemes which is a Morpheme on its own, and the bound Morpheme. The bound Morpheme is a Morpheme that must be attached to another morpheme in order to have meaning. Teaching Morphology in the classroom has many benefits. It helps students with their decoding, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, comprehensive, and phonology skills.

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https://youtu.be/KMbuIYgRlBU

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https://sites.google.com/site/fundamentosdelinguistica/morphemes/free-and-bound-morphemes/30.jpg?attredirects=0

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Morphological Awareness is the thought of the smallest units of meaning in language. When teaching Morphological awareness, students benefit in many ways. Students learn decoding, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and phonological skills.