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 your 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 are ‘r-controlled vowels’?
What are r-controlled vowels? R-controlled vowels are vowels that are 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.
3 R-Controlled Vowels
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/.
R-Controlled Vowel ‘ar’
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 ‘ar’ changes is 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.
R-Controlled Vowel ‘or/ore’
The second r-controlled vowel sound is /or/. For the purposes of your child in a Grade One phonics program, usually /or/ is spelled ‘or’ in the middle of a word, such as in ‘form’ or ‘corn’. At the end of a word, the r-controlled vowel sound is usually spelled ‘ore’, such as in the word ‘store’. An exception is once again a heart word, where your child can sound out some parts of the word, but some parts don’t follow general phonics rules and need to be memorized by heart, such as the heart word ‘for’. The heart word ‘for’ ends with the r-controlled vowel sound /or/, but is not spelled ‘ore’ as is the general phonics rule.
R-Controlled Vowel ‘er’
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.
Applaud your child for no longer writing just the letter ‘r’ where you know there is an r-controlled vowel in a word. She may not choose the correct spelling, but at least she is familiar with the phoneme and is attempting to apply the r-controlled vowel phonics skill you’ve just taught her. Greater familiarity with spelling with come naturally as your child reads more and more texts.
For now, as long as she is writing ‘er’ where she hears the /er/ sound in words, which is the most common spelling of this r-controlled vowel, call that a win Homeschool Mom!
