It’s probably best not to cover all of these alternatives in one lesson because it could be too much to take in.

The sound of the letter u in ‘ up’, ‘b un’ and ‘h ug’ with the sounds in ‘fl u‘, ‘p uma’, ‘t una’ and ‘m usic’.The sound of the letter o in ‘ off’, ‘h ot’ and ‘m op’ with the sounds in ‘ old’, ‘g o‘, ‘s o‘, ‘n o‘ and ‘m ost’.The sound of the letter i in ‘ ink’, ‘f in’, and ‘h it’ with the sounds in ‘H i‘, ‘f ind’, ‘l ion’, ‘k ind’ and ‘p int’.The sound of the letter e in ‘p et’, ‘t en’ and ‘b ed’ with the sounds in ‘h e‘, ‘w e‘, ‘b e‘ and ‘m e‘.The sound of the letter a in ‘ ant’, ‘h at’ and ‘c an’ with the sounds in ‘ apron’, ‘b asin’ and ‘b agel’.For example, ask your children to compare: Try to choose simple words at first and avoid digraphs if you haven’t introduced these yet. Show them some words and discuss the vowel sounds in them. Once children can decode simple one and two-syllable words competently, you could prepare them for learning about the schwa by mentioning that letters can stand for different sounds in some words.ĭiscussing some of the different sounds represented by the vowel letters can be a good introduction to this idea because some of the sounds are the same as their letter names and many children are already familiar with these.įor those children who haven’t learned about letter names, this can be an appropriate point to introduce them for the vowels.

What is a schwa