STEP FOUR: Locate the Sound in the Company of Other Letters.
What you see two minutes into this second clip will give you a better idea of how we guide students into combining vowels with consonants. However, we print the letters side-by-side rather than point to them on a chart, more along the lines of what you see forty-five seconds into this video.
Given that you don't have access to our resources (and we have yet to publish our program in its final form) below are some online substitutes you can use instead. Keep in mind that you can easily create similar material on an as-needed basis using your computer's word processing program:
Sometimes the letter that says /ă/ may look something like this.
a a a a
These four examples look a little different from the way /ă/ looked before, but they are all the same letter, and still make that same sound: /ă/.
I’m sure you’ll have no problem at all recognizing them.
Even so, it's important to make sure you can identify the letter, no matter the style in which it's printed or written, so let’s practice!
Here are three lines of letters.
Point to the letter in each row that says /ă/ and say the sound /ă/ as you point to it.
o d p a
d a o b
c q a d
That was great. Now I’d like you to point out the letter in each row that does NOT say /ă/.
(Point out distinguishing features if necessary.)
d a a a
a a d a
a d a a
Next, you might want to say something like...
That was excellent! Now it’s time to practice finding the symbol for /ă/.
I'm going to show you some lines of different letters, and each time you see the symbol for /ă/, I want you to point to it with your finger and also make the sound /ă/ as you point to the letter.
Are you ready? Okay, let's go.
a v c s
x a s z
s c v a
Awesome!
