Word Lists for oy and aw
The word lists containing 2-syllable, 3-syllable and 4-syllable words organized by vowel sounds are done. Today I’ve added the last five PDF files covering the /oul/ (as in could), /oy/, /aw/ and /err/ (as in merry) sounds plus the /u/ sound spelled with the digraph ou. They are all located in the Page Vowel Sounds - Multisyllable.
I’ll start on the consonant sounds next, and they will come in handy because I need to generate a list of words using the markers ck, tch, dge, dg and x for the Junior High Phonics Course that I’ve started laying out in the Guide.
On another note, I was browsing various websites to see how they handled vowel sounds and I couldn’t help notice how many curricula have been designed which seem to have lost sight of the fact that reading and writing are tools, and not an end in themselves. It appears to me that hours of valuable class time would be wasted if students were being asked to spend time on many of the activities of the sort described on the sites I visited.
I firmly believe that we best learn how to use a tool when we use it for the purpose it was intended. Yes, we need to understand the intricacies of a tool well enough to maintain and use it properly, but we do not need to study the tool itself in depth. We need, instead, to use the tool for the purpose it was intended. When it comes to reading curricula, it almost seems as if we spend more time studying a word and how it is put together, how it looks, how it feels, etc., than we do using the word productively. Words exist to convey meaning, and we need to get right to that as soon as students understand their rudimentary construction.
This is why, I think, the Spalding Method is such an effective language curriculum. It gets to the meat of the matter in a hurry, while overlooking none of the essentials for understanding the tools themselves. But it doesn’t get lost in the tools. Once letters and sounds are understood, and words are constructed based upon them, the curriculum gets down to the business of writing and reading, and in that order, writing before reading. In that way, writing and reading take their rightful place in a child’s mind as a tool for conveying meaning.
But enough of that. The completed word lists organized by the nineteen vowel sounds in the OnTrack Reading curriculum are here on the Page Vowel Sounds - Multisyllable.