Tip 1
No vowels in blends
When marking up blends..........Remind the students that a vowel cannot be a part of a blend. Therefore, when you come across a word that contains a "q" in it, they should not mark up the letter "u" even though the two letters are usually seen together.
Example: s q u i s h
The letter s and the letter q would both get a separate line to show that it is a blend. The letters s & h are underlined together to show that they are part of a digraph. Theq can also be circled to show that it is the "chicken" or "buddy" letter.
Tip 2
Welded sounds in blends
Remember---a welded sound might contain a blend!
Example:
Tip 3
Our dialect
A question has come up regarding closed syllables. Is the word bank a closed syllable?
Yes, it is.
1. It only has one vowel.
2. It has at least one consonant behind it. (Which closes it in.)
But you might ask yourself, doesn't a closed syllable give the vowel the short sound ?
Yes it does..........but remember that we (Wisconsinites) do not always pronounce the short a sound correctly!!!
Think of the words flag and bag. They really are short a words but we pronounce them with almost a long a sound!
Explain to the students that the program was created in an eastern state where their speech is a bit different than ours and that we sometimes pronounce our words incorrectly.
(Do not mark the student down if they are using the long a sound in ank and ang. It is our dialect and should be taken into consideration!)
u n k
Make sure that students understand that it can be marked up as both.