Childrens Literature and Literacy

Every word and Syllable in English has a vowel (well not Cwm and crwth, but technically not of English origin but still a killer Scrabble move). We pronounce vowels with no blockage of the airway (Beck, 2006).

Clymer (1966) did the first review of phonic rules. He examined “primers” and came up with generalizations we use today:

1. a single vowel will be short in a closed syllable, or a syllable that closes the airway
2. a single vowel will be long in an open syllable, one that leaves the airway open
3. when a word ends in a vowel, consonant, e the e is silent and the vowel long (magic e)
4. when vowels go a walking the first does the talking, two vowels such as rain, the i makes the a say it's name, or long vowel sound.

Other researchers (Burmeister, 1968) found the open and closed syllable rules did little to capture how close vowel phonemes can sound. Vowels just do not have predictable phoneme patterns like consonants (Johnston, 2001) and therefore must get taught through grapheme-phoneme connections.

Digraph- A digraph consists of two vowels that make usually one sound. The first vowel is usually the long vowel in words such as rain, fleet. We often refer to these as the talkers since the vowel says it's name.

Dipthong- A dipthong, or glide, consists of two vowels that make a new sound. Think boy, book, cow. If you speak the dipthong slowly you can hear the two distinct sounds “gliding” together. Split Digraph- The magic e. The vowels do not touch but stay a consonant away.

Schwa Vowels -Schwa vowels make the u sound such as the word “about”