3. How to Teach R-Controlled Vowels

In this section we are going to walk you through the steps for teaching r-controlled vowels to your students:

• 3.1 Prepare for Instruction — Get ready and gather the materials you need.
• 3.2 Explicitly Teach the Skill — See how to introduce the new information to students.

At Reading Universe we use an evidence-based approach popularly known as structured literacy. Structured literacy is a way of organizing and delivering reading instruction to ensure students get all the skills they need in an efficient timeframe — and without any gaps. With this approach, teachers use explicit or direct instruction. Read more about structured literacy here.

We recommend a daily phonics lesson routine that looks something like this:

Download the Phonics Lesson Daily Checklist (opens in new window).

Your lesson will start with a quick phonemic awareness activity, what we call a Listening Game. For r-controlled vowels, you could ask your students to blend sounds to say a word. Here's an example you might try. Say,

The sounds are /sh/, /ar/, /p/. What is the word? [sharp]

In the Warm Up you'll use flash cards to review the sounds your students already know. For example, you will want to review any vowels, consonants, blends or digraphs that might be used during dictation. Watch this demo to see how we recommend introducing the r-controlled vowels flash cards (opens in new window).

New/Review is where you will introduce r-controlled vowels.

During Dictation, students will practice spelling words with the r-controlled vowels that they just learned. 

All of this leads up to the last portion of the lesson, in which students practice putting all the skills together for Reading with Fluency.