Enunciating Phonics When Teaching Kids to Read

"Over the next few sections we're going to be talking about the building block of learning which is letter sounds. Two different types of letter sounds, there are consonants which are most of the alphabet and then there are 5 vowels. The 5 vowels you should know but they are A E I O and U. Now the vowels we pronounce very differently when we're teaching children so that they get a very clear understanding of how to pronounce when they're reading and that will help them in sounding out words tremendously. The consonants I'm going to talk about first. Now the consonants, if you remember sounding out, you might of remember people say ku a t; cat. Now that's very close, that's very good. But to make it even more clear we're going to take the vowel off the consonant. So instead of saying ku a t, we're going to kaat. Now the difference is there is no uh in front of each consonant because when we say cat we don't say kuata. Look at that little kuata running down the street and we want children to be as clear as possible especially when we're starting out. So to make sure that you're not doing that with consonants, put your hand in front of your mouth. If you feel a little puff of air, cu cu cu, on your hand, you know you're doing it wrong. If you don't feel that puff of air ca ca ca, you know you're doing it right. Cat, cat, now you may feel a little puff with the t, but try to minimize it as much as possible and that's how we start to teach them to sound out. Now the vowel can go a long time. There are 5 vowels and you can stretch it as long as you feel the child needs caaat, like that. And that's how we enunciate letter sounds."