“English has a limited set of 44 speech sounds, including schwa, for which there are about 80-120 teachable spellings.” Louisa Moats

44 Phonemes

"44 Phonemes Free video resource for teachers. When teaching students to read, modeling the correct letter sounds is critical. Learn how to pronounce the 44 phonemes in the English alphabet." www.readrightfromthestart.org

SCHWA

Schwa (ə) is the most common vowel sound. It sounds like /u/ but a little bit weaker. When making this sound, the mouth hardly opens.

English is a stress-timed language. In words with more than one syllable, one will be stressed while the other(s) are not.

Example of a vowel switching to schwa:

Wagon

Wag + on = /ˈwaɡən/

The <o> in the second syllable is not accented and makes the schwa /u/ sound.

For more information on schwa, see the Teacher Resource Card in the Syllables and Affixes Section.

Chart for where the accent is usually found in a word.

Creating A Vowel Chart

This is a short video tutorial that I have created on teaching students to make a vowel chart. We are currently working on long vowel sorts in the Words Their Way Program Within Word Patterns. This chart is a way for students to organize the vowel(s) and their placement in words.