He also got very frustrated when I tried to teach him the short vowel sound for the letter A and then move on to reading 3 letter CVC words using it, like "hat." He can sound them out, so I wasn't sure what the hang up was. I realized when we were reading simple stories with "sight words" such as "a," I consistently pronounce the letter A differently than the only way I'd taught him. We often pronounce the article "a" with either the long A vowel sound or the schwa sound, similar to a short U vowel sound.
I decided to back off from reading lessons a bit and introduce the vowels in all their glory... or confusion... Nah, we'll stick with glory since a positive outlook and excited teaching demeanor has such a profound effect on our student's learning curve!
I hope you find these worksheets and activities helpful, and I've included fairly detailed instructions on the last 3 pages (there are 12 pages total to the pdf file) in case that will be helpful to some. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement on the unit, please feel free to comment here or contact me (see the yellow banner at the top of the page). It might take me a while to get back to you, but I do respond to all non-spam messages.
Take heart, as many ways as there are to learn, there are to teach, so if this approach doesn't work for you, or what you have been doing isn't getting the results or the response you were anticipating, draw in a deep breath and thank the Lord for His creativity in making us all so unique! The possibilities are endless, and that is not a bad thing!
Click below to download the .PDF file.
three_sounds_of_letter_a_unit_worksheets.pdf |