English Reading

syllable types anchor chart

Syllable Types

What is Syllable?

Count the number of sounds in hear in a word (do not count letters). Syllable is single unit of sound. A word may have one syllable , two or more. Cat is single sound unit word, tiger has two units of sound /ti/ /ger/.  Every syllable has a vowel in it. 

Syllable Count

To count syllables, put your hand under your chin to count how many times your mouth opens when you say a word. For example for the word planet our mouth opens two times /pla/ /net/. 

n general number of syllables in a word is equal to number of vowel sounds in the word. Remember its vowel sound not vowel.

There are 6 six syllable types.

  1. Closed Syllable
  2. Open Syllable
  3.  Vowel Consonant e
  4. R Controlled Vowel
  5. Vowel Team
  6. Consonant- le

1. Closed Syllable

syllable types closed syllable free chart

Syllable which has a short vowel and ends with consonant is closed syllable. Such as sat, hit , jam.

2. Open syllable

A syllable which ends with vowel and the vowel has long sound. For example Hi, Me, 

syllable types open syllable

3. Vowel Consonant e

This syllable type is also called as magic e syllable. This syllable ends with letter e and the vowel preceding e takes long sound.

Vowel Consonant e Syllable Type Free chart

4. R Controlled Vowel

This syllable have vowel followed by letter r  such as ar er ir or ur. Here the vowel sound is controlled by r. Therefore we say r controlled vowel. For example /tri/ in Triangle, /pur/ in Purple.

r controlled syllable type splendidmoms free chart

5. Vowel Team

This syllable which has two vowels. For exmaple Heat, Book, Seed.

vowel team syllable free chart splendidmoms

6. Consonant-le

This syllable which has consonant le pattern in the end. For example /ple/ in Sample, /cle/ in Miracle.

consonant le syllable free chart splendid moms

To divide any word into smaller sound units called syllables we should learn syllable division rule.

Here the complete anchor chart showing syllable types.

syllable types anchor chart
digrpah th two sounds - voiced and unvoiced

Two sounds of digraph TH – Voiced and Unvoiced

Two sounds of digraph TH – Voiced and Unvoiced

The digraph ch, sh are easy to learn and remember. Do you also think so? Then tell me about digraph th.

th is the most common digraph we see in English. And it has two sounds- Voiced(hard) and unvoiced(soft). We often do not bother to know the rules which can help you decide between voiced and unvoiced sound of th. But as a parent and teacher what would you answer your kid when they ask why this sound ? I always loved  answering each and every question that is posed to me by my kids. Wouldn’t you?

 

So spare 5 mints to know these simple rules to decide the sound of digraph th in a spelling and become your kid’s super teacher!

Below is the anchor chart which tells the rules for digraph th. The voiced and unvoiced sound usage is based on th position in the spelling.

two sounds of digraph th Rules voiced unvoiced

Feel free to download for personnel use and do not forget to comment.

Download link

44vsounds of english

44 Sounds of English

44 Sounds of English

We start learning English with 26 letters which are called the Alphabets. Though there are only 29 letters we have altogether 44 sounds in English. You know why? Because Many letters in English have more than one sound. Single letter represents more than one sound and one sound can be represented using different letters.  Confused? Let me put it in simple examples:

letter g has two sounds – /g/ and /j/

the sound /k/ – can be written as letter c or letter k

Below is the list of 44 sound in English Language. The 44 Sounds includes 24 consonant sounds, 12 vowel sounds and 8 dipthong sounds.

44sounds in english

Having complete knowledge of phonics is always beneficial. I hope you had a great time knowing all the 44 sounds in English Language. If so, show us some love and drop a comment and share the post.

First 120 Sight Words With Sentences

First 120 Sight Words With Sentences

 We want our kids to become fluent readers. We start with blending, CVC words, and other phonic principals or rules. There is one more important skill that we cannot miss is reading with sight words. Sight words for kindergartens are very important.

Did you observe while reading/writing any English passage words like – is, the, and, he, she, it, was, to …. appear in almost every sentence.  These words are called sight words or high frequency words. We should encourage kids to learn these words by sight. While reading kids should recognize sight words instantly instead of sounding them.

 

Few Sight words like it, him, not, can are easier to sound out as they follow phonic rules. Most of the sight words do not follow phonic rules. Thus they cannot be sounded out because they don’t sound like they are spelled. Sight words like you, was, are – have different sounds which does not fit well with phonic rules. And if read with phonics they might sound yao, wass, air.

Sight words account up to 75% of the words used in beginning children’s books.

She is going to Zoo.

In the above sentence, the words like she, is, to – are sight words. So don’t use phonic sounds or phonic rules. Just recognise them by sight (pronunciation) and read. Do not decode them. Rest of the words in the sentence can be read using phonics.

This way you will take less time to read and you become a fluent reader. Similar is the case with kids.

Kids are taught common sight words from kindergarten. As we all know there will more of reading /writing from grade 1. There are like 100 sight words that kids should learn by grade 1. This will help them to boost their confidence just because they know most of the 2 letter 3letter or 4 letter words that they see in a sentence. They just need to decode the other bigger words using phonic rules.

Download  first 120 sight words and worksheets for sight words for free that you can teach in kindergarten.

First Sight wordsfor kindergarten splendid moms       Sight Words with sentences Splendid Moms

Now that we understood what are sight words let’s see some of benefits of Sight words:

Beginner reader will save time:

In the beginning when kids start reading they will try to decode each and every word in the sentence. This will usually take more time. By Knowing sight words kids can read faster, can be fluent.

Promotes Confidence:

Imagine you already know about 50 – 60% words in a passage. How confident you will feel about reading? Similarly for beginner readers knowing sight words boosts their confidence.

Helps in understanding the context:

While reading if we try and decode each and every word in a sentence, we will focus on reading only word by word without understanding what that meant. Instead if they are familiar with sight words they can focus on other words in the sentence. This will help them to understand the sentence they are reading.

Every grade have different sight word level. Sight words that your kid has learned in kindergarten will help in grade 1 and he can learn few more in grade 1 which will help him in further reading. Every year kids at school are expected to recognize more and more words by sight. Sight words help children in building fluency and foundation for reading comprehension.

English Reading Tips

How To Teach Kids English Reading With Basic Blending and Division Rule

 

How To Teach Kids English Reading With Basic Blending and Division Rule

 

English Reading : Sound dividing strategies

When trying to read a new word in English which you are not familiar with, we try to divide the word in chunks considering the vowel sounds .

International /in/ /ter/ /na/ /tion/ /al/

These individual Chunk sounds make reading any new word little easy as little chunks are easy to remember in our short memory to later blend them.

Strong – /str/ /ong/

But do you know you cannot just divide the sounds in the word randomly. Though syllable knowledge helps to greater extent in dividing the sounds in a word (to read) , most of us are not fully aware of it.  And that is completely fine.  Even today I struggle to use those syllable division rules.

 

When dividing the word sound in to pieces with/without syllable knowledge just based on vowel sounds you should follow some rules

 

English Reading Tips splendid moms

Rule 1 # Blends

Always consider the blends like cl , fl, sp, tr etc as one sound. In the word flower do not take f , l as two sounds /f/ and /l/. /fl/ always stands as single sound.  Similar is the case with other blends.

clock – /c//l//o//ck/ This is wrong.

clock – /cl//o//ck/ treat cl as one sound.

Rule 2 # Digraphs

Remember the digraphs ch, th, sh, wh. Never split them in individual sound

Ship – /s//h/ /i//p/  This is wrong

It should be [sh] [i] [p]. Sh is one sound.

Rule 3 # Vowel Teams

When you see two vowels next to each other consider them as one single sound. Vowel pair can have

long and silent sound – ai, ay, ee, ea , ie, oa, oe,

short or special sound (vowel digraphs) – oo, ei, au, ea, aw

gliding sound (dipthongs) – oy, ow, ew, oi, ou

when reading the word Wheat – never divide it as /wh/ /e//a//t/ but divide it as /wh//ea//t/

Rule 4 # R – Controlled vowels

Any vowel with consonant r have different sound and we should always know how to sound them.

ar, er, ir, or, ur are r controlled vowels and r changes the sound of the vowel.  So never isolate sounds in  /ar/ to /a//r/ and same with other r controlled vowels.

Farm – /f/ /ar/ /m/

Term – /t/ /er/ /m/

Shirt – /sh/ /ir/ /t/

Torch – /t/ /or/ /ch/

Turn – /t/ /ur//n/

Rule 5 # Silent E  ( C + le)

Consonant + le is when you have a consonant followed by le in the word .

Eg : turtle

Always consider c+le as single sound

Turtle – /t/ /u/ /r/ /t/ /l/ /e/ this is not the correct way.

Consider dividing the ounds as /t/ /ur/ /tle/ so that you can read it eaily.

Rule 6 # glued sounds

Glued sounds or welded sounds are sounds that make slightly different sound when they are together.

Glued sounds are all ,am,an, ang , ank, ing , ong, ung, unk, ink, onk.

Bank – /b/ /a/ /n/ /k/ never do this.

Instead do /b/ /ank/.

You need not be an expert in syllables to read a word. Just remember these basic rules and apply them when dividing sounds in a word so that you can read it easily.

Phonics revision chart with example words

Improve English Reading Skill In Kids

At Home Reading Activity- Improve English Reading Skill In Kids

Most of our kids struggle to read and write English lessons once they are in grade 1. English reading skills in kids are very important and need to be improved in early stages. Many parents comment me saying how to improve English reading skill in kids.

Before telling what you can do or how can you help you kid or student I want you to understand that it is a very common problem.

Common because kids in UKG or PP2 learn blending and small sentences and as they reach grade 1 you see English  in almost all subjects be it EVS, Computers, GK, even in Maths they have to read questions.  Since there is drastic change in their curriculum and huge English reading is involved you will find almost all kids struggling to read.

Now lets see what as a parent or teacher you can do.

 

  • Have the phonics list to quickly revise all the blending and sounds in English that would help in reading.

What you have to do is to revise and make the kids understand these sounds and ask them to apply them while reading.  Reading any English word would need

understanding of blendings that kids learn in their PP2.Improve english reading skill in kids

So to start from make sure kids have proper knowledge of blendings bl, cl, fl, gl,pl, br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, ss, ll. Apart from this digraphs , r controlled vowels, long vowel sounds, vowel pairs are also important. If you have no idea what I am talking about you can anytime visit my YouTube channel and see videos explaining different blending sounds.

Click here to download the At Home Reading Activity Phonics List with example words.pdf

 

Phonics revision chart with example words
Phonics revision chart with example words
  • Teaching Sight Words 

Next very important thing that you cannot ignore are the sight words. Sight words help tremendously in improving english reading skills. Sight words are small words that appear many times and most of them cannot be read using phonics. So memorizing them will help. Sight words : and, it, he , she, to, all, many,the etc.

So imagine your kid is reading English lesson from his text book and he already know all these sight words. It will definitely increase his confidence. The other bigger words he should try using all the phonic strategies that he knows.

In “At Home Reading Activity ”  make your kids or student read 2 -3 paragraphs daily . Each paragraph should be read 3 time.  each time when they are reading you will notice the change in fluency.

In First turn,  they can read sight words and  for bigger words try blending of phonics or take your help. What is not allowed is to spell the word and then pronouncing it. Any word should be read only using phonic sounds but not the letter names.

Doing this activity daily will help kids learn to read English confidently even if they don’t know any new word which they are reading for the first time.

Teaching Difficult spellings to kids

How To Teach Spellings To Kids Easily

How To Teach Spellings To Kids Easily

Spelling Homework were really a nightmare for me!

Do you also feel so?

But I slowly understood what is best in teaching spellings to primary kids and get them ready for dictation at school.

Now let me share what I do when teaching my son Zayan spellings after finishing each lesson. In a traditional method here in India soon after finishing lesson teacher gives hard words from the lessons as a weekend homework only to conduct dictation on Monday. This is called spelling homework. I follow

Read Loud – Spell Out – Write It Down

approach when teaching spellings. I find this best for my kid and I am sure you will also.

  • Read Loud 

First read the word with correct pronunciation. Without knowing the word there are more chances that kids might miss pronounce it. Take this word as example. Ex: Medicine . Without knowing the correct pronunciation kids might read it as med-aik-ine. So before teaching the spellings first read aloud all the words and ask them to repeat. This will help them in relating the words they are hearing and letters they are seeing on paper.

  • Spell Out

Now that kids have pronounced the words lets relate the sound with the letters in the word. lets take the same example word Medicine. Here in this word we can break the sounds as we hear Med/i/cine. In these three syllables med is like a cvc 3 letter words that is easy to read and understand. Then we have vowel i sound.

In the end we have cine which is little difficult to explain.

We have soft sound of letter c( letter c takes soft sound as /s/ if it has vowel next to it).Then long vowel i sound , letter n sound and in the end vowel e.

Do this for few words and as they progress kids themselves will be able to break the sound with syllable in the word.  You need not explain rules for all words just breaking of sounds is enough which will help them to relate the sound in the spellings.

  • Write It Down

Now finally its time to practice. After doing the above two steps make them practice by writing few times. Though I call it as traditional method writing is necessary as I believe “Writing one time is equal to reading ten time”. It is indeed. Even while writing reading is important. So give then 5 words to practice writing at a time. After writing each word ask them to recall what they have written by covering with their palm. This will boost their confidence and help them to remember.

Every kid is different some might learn fast, some learn and forget and some might take more time.There is no shortcut practice and revision is the key.

Though the method looks tedious,  I would tell as parent you should invest time teaching your kid.Their is no other option. Without giving time you cannot expect a primary student to read and learn himself. So all the best in teaching spellings!!