Lesson 02

4 letter-sounds

LEARNING WITH PHONICS - LESSON 2 VIDEO

MONA'S QUICK GUIDE

Words with 4 letter-sounds

Children hardly seem to notice the move from 3 to 4+ letters. The extra letter is a consonant, giving a consonant blend either at the beginning or end, anywhere in the word.

  • Top + s = stop.

  • Fog + r = frog.

  • Pat + s = past or pats.

Time spent at this level promotes fluency, self-confidence and automaticity, and helps to prevent guessing. I believe fluency just creeps up, and time spent focussed on fluency as such can be better used.

Play the games:

  • Bingo

  • Pairs.

  • S/ladders.

Guide Contributed by Mona McNee - 2010

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Constantly blending and sounding out letters is the key to learning to read. The games below feature some words where the actual pronunciation is slightly different from how the word is sounded out. for instance the word Blanket sounds out as " blank-et" but is actually pronounced "blank-it" . While on paper this looks confusing, in practice it really isn't. There is a good chance the child will automatically recognise the slight discrepancy and pronounce the word properly. If not, simply let the child sound it out as "blank-et" and say "well done," but we actually say "blank-it"

In the English language all the vowels can make a "uh" sound as in "the." This sound is phonically referred to as a schwa in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The highlighted letters in the following words are schwa examples:

    • Hundred

    • Husband

    • Common

    • Pencil

    • Supply

Again, let the child sound out the words using the short vowel sounds and the correct pronunciation will follow.

GAMES AND WORKSHEETS

Links will take you to a quickview page in Google Docs where you may download the PDF for local printing by clicking File then Download original. This guide contains download and print tips.

4 letter words