Helping Children Remember Vowel Sounds

Remembering the wide variety of English vowels sounds can be a daunting task for emergent readers. Just getting down the subtle differences between the short sounds can be tricky. Then they have to learn a seemingly endless variation of vowel pairs.

"Crying Baby" image for short a

To help emerging readers remember vowel sounds, I show them images that function as a visceral mnemonic device. Instead of remembering a specific word that has that vowel sound, I show an image of people/animals/objects that look as if they might be making that sound. In some instances, the image triggers the child to make the sound (the cute kitten makes children want to say the vowel pair “aw”). I then name the sound with a short phrase.  I also include the letter or letters on the card.

Short a: Image of a crying baby with a wide open mouth and the word “waaaah” next to it; Crying Baby sound

Short e: Image of an older person with a hand cupped behind his ear appearing to say “eh”; “Speak Up!” sound

Short i: Image of a person sneering; Disgusted sound

Short o: Image of a child opening his mouth saying “ah” for the doctor; Doctor’s Visit sound

Short u: Image of a person looking confused and asking “What?”; Asking a Question sound

Whenever a child mispronounces or forgets a vowel sound, I move the appropriate flashcard above the word to prompt her memory of it.

Whenever I pull out the card, I say the short phrase that goes with it. Eventually, all I have to say is, “it’s the ‘Doctor’s Visit’ sound” to trigger a memory of the sound itself.

After a few times of looking at the images, some children remind themselves of the sound by first making the same expression as the face in the image or by acting out what they see in the image. One girl put her hand behind her ear to remind herself of the short e sound.

"Eh, speak up" image for short e

I’ve also created flashcards for vowel pairs that seem especially hard for beginning readers to remember. I then write all the most common spellings that make the sound on the flashcard. I give each of these cards a short name.

er, ir, ur: Cartoon image of a growling dog; Growling Dog sound

ow, ou: Cartoon image of a man who has just hammered his thumb and is obviously shouting “ow!”; Hammer Thumb sound

ew, oo: I found a funny image of two carved pumpkins in which one appears to be vomiting it’s innards and another appears to be looking at it and saying “ew”; Barfing Pumpkin sound.

aw, au: Cartoon image of an adorable kitten that makes you want to say “awwwww” when you look at it; Cute Kitten sound.

I try to find images that are silly or appealing as that helps lighten the load of learning vowels.

"Ow, my thumb" image for vowel pairs ow/ou

Action Phonics

I see several first and second grade children for whom sitting still is a bit of a nightmare. To accommodate, I make my pre-reading activities as active as possible. Two examples:

Step-on-it Word Families:

Step-On-It Word Families

First, I identify three word families from a story we’ll be reading. I write five or six words all belonging to the same family on 8.5″ by 11″ card stock or foam. I use as many words as I can from the story and make up the rest.  Then I tape words to circles lining the perimeter of a Twister mat. I make sure words with the same endings are placed a few circles apart. The first three words represent one word from each of the three word families. The child steps on the first word and says it aloud. Then as she walks around the perimeter, she can only step on words from the same family. Sometimes, the word families are similar such as “ark” and “art”. If a child steps on the wrong word, I just take time to slowly sound it out until she can hear the difference. I also tell her to look for words with the same ending letters. Once the child has completed one round, she returns to the beginning and steps on the second word. She repeats the activity until all word families have been stepped on.

Some children like to be timed doing this activity. The first walk around is just for practice. Then I pull out the stopwatch. For some, this is a great motivator for increasing their fluency.

Hit the Vocabulary Word:

Hit the Vocabulary Word

First, I choose five new vocabulary words from the story and write them each on an 8.5″ by 11″ piece of paper. I fasten them vertically to a wooden plank that I prop upright against the wall. The most effective way I’ve found to make the paper stick to the wood is using adhesive putty.

To begin the activity, I make sure the child can pronounce each word and understands its meaning. Then I ask the child to pitch the ball at the first word and to say the word aloud as the ball hits its target. I tutor some struggling readers that will practice reading these words over and over as they strive to hit each target perfectly. Sometimes the plank falls over with a big crash, but since that only adds to the fun, I haven’t yet attempted a way to connect the plank to the wall.

Pre-Reading Activity for Primary Grades

Here’s a fun pre-reading activity to motivate beginning readers. Children create a 3-D scene from the story before they read it. This activity has multiple positive effects. First, it familiarize students with a story’s vocabulary and plot. This helps children do a better job of decoding words as they read and, consequently, they read more fluently. Second, it engages children in the story, sparking their imagination and bringing the story to life. My students often read with more expression after setting up the scene.

Little Bear Makes Birthday Soup

Setting up a scene takes a little preparation. I’m lucky that my own kids are young enough to still have dollhouse and Lego toys laying around. Other ways to collect toys for props could be garage sales or ebay.

After I set out the props needed for the story at hand, together we create a scene based on an illustration or just common knowledge about the story. For example, we look at Maurice Sendak’s illustrations to set up scenes from Little Bear stories by Else Holmelund Minarik. But, for Jack and the Beanstalk, we imagine our own version of scenes.

Mother Bear Brings the Birthday Cake

As we build the scenes, I name all of the props. For example, when we build the scene for Little Bear’s Birthday Soup, I ask students to make sure the basket contains all four vegetables that are needed in the birthday soup, and we name them aloud. We line up Little Bear’s friends in the order of their appearance in the story, naming each one. During scene creation, I also summarize the plot. I tell them that Mother Bear is missing on Little Bear’s birthday, so Little Bear has decided to take charge himself. Since he doesn’t know how to make birthday cake, he’s going to make birthday soup. I make sure to mention most of the story’s vocabulary before they begin reading. I’ve noticed that introducing vocabulary in this interactive, engaging way helps children remember how to pronounce words as they read.

Once the scene is complete, they begin to read. About midway through the story, we take a reading break so they can set up the birthday table scene. Again, I make sure to name all the props and explain the upcoming plot using words from the text. Then they finish reading the story.

All my struggling emergent readers love this exercise. I think the playful quality and repetition of vocabulary helps them feel relaxed and confident. It helps my English language learners understand and remember new vocabulary words. Even children who have a hard time sitting still and focusing are willing to settle down and read after they’ve set up the scene.

Helping a hyperactive child overcome reading problems

While it’s easy to see the outward signs of a hyperactive child, these children can also have cognitive hyperactivity. I tutored a child for whom this cognitive hyperactivity caused reading problems. I’ll call her Ashley.

When I first saw Ashley, she had just finished first grade and her teacher was concerned that she might not be ready to read at a second grade level. Ashley read extremely slowly, sounding out every letter in every word with little expression. As she read, she wiggled around in her chair, swinging her arms and tapping her feet. Despite her lack of fluency, she easily comprehended the content. She’d accurately predict what was about to happen next, she’d guess the ending, and she’d often share a number of ideas or memories triggered by the story.

She was definitely smart, but she wasn’t learning to recognize letter patterns or whole words that would help her read more quickly. Because reading was such a laborious process, she didn’t want to read in school or at home.

Over time, I realized that as she read, her mind was bombarded with ideas generated by the reading material. This bombardment made it hard for her to focus on the act of decoding. She was preoccupied with her own reactions.

Here’s one example. As she read “Where is My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman”, Ashley was busy creating a story within the story. It so happened that she had a fuzzy, pink worm in her pocket the day she read the story. As soon as the mother bird headed off to find a worm, Ashley added her worm as a character, creating subplots and new dialogue. She even added the worm into illustrations. Since the baby bird had no mother, Ashley curled the worm around the baby bird to keep it warm. She also used the worm as a pillow to soften the baby bird’s fall from its nest.

I wondered how to use this abundance of creative energy to help her read. It seemed that reading someone else’s story mainly triggered an interest in her own ideas. I decided to see what would happen if I had her write her own stories and read those. I hoped that if she was reading her own ideas, maybe she’d have an easier time focusing on the act of reading.

The strategy worked.

To help her generate an idea for a story, I first read her one about a circus. Then I handed her a blank book, and she enthusiastically wrote a funny story about going to the circus. Then she picked up her story and quickly read through it. Since she has a great memory, I’m sure she had most of the words memorized or at most just needed a few letter clues to help her remember the words. Still, I was surprised by her sudden fluency.

When she reread the story at her next session one week later, she had a somewhat harder time decoding words, but basically she read through it pretty easily. She did this even though I had typed up the story using proper spelling instead of her phonetic spelling. Her excitement about being the author motivated her to pay close attention to decoding the words.

For a long time, we completely stopped reading anything but her own stories. I keep a collection of toys and stuffed animals in my office and as she played with them, she began to spin elaborate tales. Since her writing was such a slow process, I let her dictate the stories she wove as she played with the characters on the floor. She actually wrote a lengthy, coherent, hilarious, chapter book about her characters (She’s thinking about trying to publish it!)

Every time she finished a chapter, she would read it back to me with great enthusiasm, expression and fluency. One wonderful result of this process is that she has been able to transfer her new-found fluency to other reading materials. I bought a book of plays for young readers, and she can now sight read her parts pretty quickly.

It’s not that Ashley has overcome all her reading problems. She seems to have a visual processing problem that makes it hard to her to always see the letters in their correct sequence. But, by increasing her reading speed, she can more easily decode words in context, even if she experiences some sequence confusion. In less than a year, she’s gone from stumbling over first grade readers to reading fluently at a third grade level.

In school, her teacher says she no longer has a problem with reading fluency. At home she’s reading books on her own.

Working with Ashley, I realized that it’s important to keep an open mind about the best way for a child to learn, especially if they have a learning difference.