Newsletter – Back to school again – August 16, 2024

I saw the word beatific in a book I was reading the other day. In my mind I pronounced it /bee-tif-ic/, but I was wrong. When I looked up the definition—beatific means blissfully happy—I learned that it’s actually pronounced /bee-uh-tif-ic/.

That got me thinking.

You may have heard it said that “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” Well, vowels usually do talk, but we want our students to know what that first vowel usually says. To make things clearer, we say, “When you have two vowels together, the first one says its name.” That’s why I thought the word beatific was pronounced /bee-tif-ic/.

One day I noticed the words Koala Care on our baby changing station. I pride myself in equipping our Book Bums kids to accurately decode most any word they want to read. (We’re really good at that.) But I hadn’t yet equipped kids to decode words like koala. Using what I’d taught them, my students would decode this word as saying cola.

Here's how we explain what’s happening so kids aren’t stumped and can decode these words:

Sometimes you’re going to see words that have two vowels together, you’ll make the first one say its name, BUT it won’t make a word that fits. No problem. Here’s what to do: The first vowel will say its name, but the second vowel will make a sound too. The second vowel in the pair almost always makes it’s short sound. Not always, but usually.

All you have to do is split the vowels. We always try the two vowels together rule first. If that doesn’t make a word you know, just split the vowels. Try these:

Lion doesn’t say /line/; it says li-on.

Fluid doesn’t say /flewd/; it says flu-id.

Science doesn’t say /signs/; it says sci-ence.

Cereal doesn’t say /see-real/; it says ce-re-al.

Meander doesn’t say /mean-der/; it says me-an-der.

When a student reads diet as /dite/, we say, “Does that make a word you know? Try splitting the vowels.” Then the student reads /die-et/. Nailed it.