Vowels and Phonemic Awareness
This site is dedicated to teaching phonics and phonemic awareness, specifically vowels. Phonemic awareness, along with sight word recognition, can help all students learn to read. Children who are able to decode words are able to grow as readers because they ultimately read more words. (Blevins, 2006) Phonics is the relation between a letter and the sound it makes, and phonemic awareness emphasizes the relationship among the letters and their sounds. Teaching phonics skills is essential for beginning readers. Literary success spurs from an understanding of words and their letter composition. (Hults, 2003)
Vowels
Vowels are very important for young students to develop knowledge. Every syllable in our language contains a vowel sound. There are five vowels (a,e,i,o,u). Some educators also teach that the letter y can sometimes be a vowel. These 5 (or 6) vowels make 19 different vowel sounds. There are many vowel rules to help children distinguish what sound the vowel in a particular word may make. It is important for students to be aware of the vowel rules because it can help them decode words and become better readers. There are also various vowel combinations that produce different sounds. Because vowels tend to break the rules at times, it is also important to teach children words by sight reconition. Words you teach by sight, or sight words, are normally words that do not follow the rules of phonics. (Blevins, 2006)
Getting started with vowels
To get started with vowels, you first need to be aware of the many sounds that they make. Different sources classify vowels in various ways (ie. digraphs, diphthongs), but the sounds they make (in the United States) remain consistant.
Here are the vowel sounds with word examples:
long a short a long e short e long i short i
take sat free let lime pin
pain ran these web pie fit
play me might
beat
key
long o short o long u short u
vote box June tub
goat cot dude cut
flow
fold
aw/au/al ir/er/ur ar or oi/oy
law stir far form boil
cause her alarm corn joy
fall churn
ou/ow (oo) oo
out took mood
brown put clue
should flew
tube
(Blevins, 2006)
Here are the vowel sounds with word examples:
long a short a long e short e long i short i
take sat free let lime pin
pain ran these web pie fit
play me might
beat
key
long o short o long u short u
vote box June tub
goat cot dude cut
flow
fold
aw/au/al ir/er/ur ar or oi/oy
law stir far form boil
cause her alarm corn joy
fall churn
ou/ow (oo) oo
out took mood
brown put clue
should flew
tube
(Blevins, 2006)