All About Short Vowels and How to Teach 'Em: Phonics Rules for Teachers Episode 9

Short vowels are typically the first vowel sounds that children learn, but why is that? Let's take a look at what short vowels are, some important facts for understanding short vowels, and how the heck to teach this important phonics concept to your students.

A classroom teacher with 10 years of experience, Martha Moore hosts the Phonics Rules for Teachers Podcast. Drawing from her personal journey, she shares insights on transitioning from traditional teaching methods to a phonics-centered approach and the impact it has on students' reading and writing.

Each week , Martha shares a simple phonics rule, strategy, or background information and how you can teach it in your classroom.

You can find the How the Heck to Teach 'Em supplementary resource to go along with this series here: https://www.myprimaryparadise.com/shop/phonics-rules-resources/

Download the other resources featured in this episode here:
Decodable Partner Plays
Fluency Drill Cards

Transcript

Why couldn't the "A" and cat go on the roller coaster? It was too short. That was [Music] terrible.

Welcome back to Episode 9 of Phonics Rules for Teachers and How the Heck to Teach Them. Today we are going to be talking all things short vowels. What makes a vowel short and how do we teach it to our students? What's so short about a short vowel?

You probably already know that short vowels are typically the first vowel sounds that students learn when they are learning English. You also probably already know that all of these words begin with a short vowel sound: apple, egg, in, odd, up. But you might not know that there actually is a reason that we call short vowel sounds short. Short vowel sounds are called short vowels because our mouth only makes one movement when we make a short vowel sound. We only open our mouth to make a short vowel sound. When we make a long vowel sound, our mouth makes two movements: it opens and it closes.

This is very interesting because English words typically end with a closed mouth. Where do we find short vowels in words? As you might already know if you watch my video on consonants, consonants are sounds that are produced when the mouth is blocked in some way. Since English words typically end with a closed mouth, that means that English words don't typically end with a short vowel sound. Yes, there are some exceptions, but not very many. So we use a consonant after making a short vowel sound to close our mouth. That means that we mostly find short vowels within closed syllable words. Some examples of closed syllable words are: hat, egg, wish, chop, and thump.

So why do we teach short vowels first when teaching letter sounds? Our goal is to help our students read and write as soon as possible. That is because when they're able to apply their phonics knowledge in context, it will help solidify that knowledge faster. Since most closed syllables contain a short vowel sound, and short vowels make up about 50% of all of the syllables in English, short vowels are the best place to start when teaching vowel sounds. Of course, in order to be able to use short vowels in context, students also need to know at least a handful of consonant sounds as well. In addition, while short vowel sounds can be spelled with multiple letters (I'm looking at you, bread), most of the time short vowel sounds are spelled with a single letter: A, E, I, O, or U, followed by a consonant. This means that there is a clear and logical pattern for students to learn and understand as they're beginning to read and write.

Now I'm going to share with you seven strategies for teaching short vowel sounds in your classroom:

1. Teach short vowel sounds along with consonants. If a student knows even just two or three consonants and one vowel sound, they will be able to read and build some small words. For example, if students know the sounds for the letters "s," "t," "p," and "a," they can read and spell at, sat, Pat, tap, and sap.
2. Use prompts. When students are learning short vowel sounds, it's helpful to use either a keyword and/or hand motions to help them understand the sound that that specific letter makes. While we, of course, want them to recall this information automatically eventually, while they're still in the process of learning, it can be incredibly helpful to have hand motions, a word prompt, or both to embed the new sound. Here are the prompts that I like to use for short vowel sounds, but there are many great options out there or you could come up with your own. The key thing is to remember that they are clear, that they make sense, and they connect well with the sound that you're having your students make. For short "a," I have my students put their arms up and say "ah" like they're scared. Short "e," put your hand on your ear and say "e" like you can't hear what someone is saying. Short "i," wipe your hands off like there's something icky on them. "I." Short "o," make a circle around your mouth and open your mouth wide like you're saying "ah" at the doctor. "A." Short "u," put your hand on your tummy like something hit you in the tummy and say "uh." "Uh."
3. Focus on mouth position and correct pronunciation. As students are learning the short vowel sounds, make sure you're focusing on how their mouth should be positioned. You can model this, and you can also have them look into mirrors while they are producing each sound to see what their mouth is doing. This is especially helpful for similar sounds such as short "e" and short "i." It's also important to stop bad habits in their tracks, so focus on the pronunciation, and if students are off with their pronunciation, continue to have them practice and model it.
4. Explain why short vowels are short. It's really helpful for students to understand the why behind what they're learning, so take the time to explain to them that the reason we call short vow short is because there is only one movement when we are making a short vowel sound. You can also explain that English words typically end with a close mouth, which is why after a short vowel we typically see a consonant letter to help us close our mouth. This also connects really well with the idea of closed syllables.
5. Read and write in context. As soon as your students know a few consonants and one or two short vowels, start reading and writing words together. You can model this together, you can work in a whole group, in a small group, and one-on-one. The sooner students start building and reading new sounds, the more comfortable they will get with them, and the easier it will be for them.
6. Use decodable text to practice. As always, when students are ready, have them start reading with decodable texts using just short vowel sounds and the consonants that they have learned. Our goal with phonics instruction is to get kids reading and writing, so we can get them started as soon as they are ready. Once students know about 10 sounds, they should be able to read a very simple decodable text using those sounds once they've practiced reading some individual words and building some individual words first. For example, if students only know the letters "s," "a," "t," "p," "n," "c," "m," an appropriate decodable might look something like this: Pat sat. Matt can. Tap Matt. Sat Pat can. Tap.
7. Teach short vowels right along with closed syllables. Since closed syllables typically have a short vowel sound, you can first teach students to hear syllables in a word and then teach them about closed syllables as you're teaching short vowels. The more we can show our students the logical rules of English, the easier it will be for them to develop strong encoding and decoding skills. And if you want to know how to teach closed syllables, I will be talking about that next week.

Don't forget to like and subscribe, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop them below. Thank you so much for joining me for this week's episode of Phonics Rules for Teachers and How the Heck to Teach Them.