Newsletter – Savoring Summer – July 12, 2024

t Book Bums, we equip kids to accurately decode most every word on the pages of the books they read. We know that many, many words will be orthographically mapped into kids’ long-term memories and those words will be recognized “on sight”— there’s no visible decoding happening there.

That’s the goal!

We acknowledge, too, that much is learned about words implicitly. Afterall, many readers were never taught to efficiently decode words and they’re doing just fine. Maybe that’s true for you?

That means that we adults often cannot explain to our children why words say what they say.

In the word Charlie for example, from our book recommendation above, it’s easy enough to share that c-h says /ch/ (like Cheerios) and a-r says /ar/ (like a pirate), but what the heck is going on with that i-e? How do we explain that one?

If you’re chanting, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking . . .” you’re probably not alone. The problem is that’s not very helpful here. The i isn’t “talking.”

It’s true that i-e usually says /eye/ as in pie. BUT, sometimes i-e says /ee/ as in piece and cookie and puppies.

At Book Bums, we teach kids that when we have two vowels together the first one says its name. (That’s clearer.) Then, later in our lesson progression, we teach kids that sometimes we have to “flip” the sounds. If you are decoding a word that has two vowels together and the first one doesn’t say its name—it doesn’t make a word you know—try flipping the sounds and make the second vowel say its name.

That’s a quick and easy way to address the i-e in Charlie. It’s a “flip flop” word. Some other words from Charlie & Mouse that are “flip flops” include cookies, Lottie, and carried.