Why can’t your child spell words like ‘farm’, ‘stir’ or ‘horse’ correctly? Why is he still spelling ‘farm’ as frm or ‘stir’ as ‘s-t-r’ or ‘horse’ as h-r-s?
What is my child missing? R-controlled vowels!
How do I teach my child r-controlled vowels when they don’t even hear the vowel attached to the letter ‘r’? R-controlled vowels is a must-teach phonics lesson when teaching your child to read!
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What is an r-controlled vowels? An r-controlled vowel is a vowel that is followed by the letter “r” and makes a new sound. The “r” changes the vowel sound, so the vowel can no longer be pronounced as a long or short vowel.
What are the 3 r-controlled vowels? The three r-controlled vowels are /ar/ as in ‘start’, /er/ as in ‘her or ‘term’ and /or/ as in corn or store. So, the 3 r-controlled vowel sounds are: /ar/, /er/ and /or/.
The first of the r-controlled vowels is /ar/. It’s pretty simple, because a-r always spells /ar/ in words like car, star, parts, etc. The only time the spelling for the r-controlled vowel a-r changes in the sight word, sometimes called heart word ‘are’. In the sentence, “You are a good reader”, the heart word ‘are’ has a silent ‘e’ at the end.
The third of the r-controlled vowels is /er/, which is also the most common. It also has the most possible spellings. Consider the words term, shirt and turn. The r-controlled vowel sound in the word ‘term’ is spelled ‘er’. In the word ‘shirt’, the r-controlled vowel sound /er/ is spelled /ir/ and in the word ‘turn’, the r-controlled vowel sound is spelled ‘ur’. This leaves your young reader with some tricky spelling decisions to make.
The ‘er’ spelling of the /er/ r-controlled vowel is by far the most common, especially at the ends of words, like ‘monster’. The ‘ir’ spelling for /er/ is the next most common followed by the least common spelling of ‘ur’ for the r-controlled vowel sound /er/. The more your child reads, the more familiarity he or she will have with spellings for the r-controlled vowels for the /er/ sound in commonly read words.
