When a vowel is followed by an R, the vowel’s sound often changes, and the vowel is said to regulate the sound. The /ar/ sound, as in barn, the /or/ sound, as in corn, and the /er/ sound, as in fern, bird, and curl, are the three basic r-controlled vowel sounds. The tasks in this section are intended to improve pupils’ ability to pronounce r-controlled vowels.

What is the best way to learn the R Controlled Vowels?

Begin with the letter ‘ar.’

In systematic phonics training, you progress from simple to complex, and from the most common to the less common representations. We use /ar/ to introduce what occurs when ‘r’ is in charge because it is the most often used R Controlled Vowel sound and has only one representation. (Note that the word ‘heart’ is an irregular and difficult word.)

‘Compare and Contrast’ is a good strategy to use.

Read CVC words with a short ‘a’ , such as ‘can,’ ‘cat,’ ‘cab,’ and ‘cap.’ Understand that the consonant ‘r’ alters the sound of the vowel immediately preceding it, and then read the word ‘car’ to yourself. Rep with other CVC words to read the word with ‘ar’.

Sound Substitution Techniques

Replace the ‘a’ with a ‘ar’ and have the children read ‘cart’ (we have a worksheet for this in our bundle!) Have them read ‘had,’ then change the ‘a’ to a ‘ar,’ and read ‘hard.’ Repeat the approach until you have a firm grasp on the subject.

Teaching Suggestions

One of the six types of syllables is a R Controlled Syllable. Read two-syllable words that only have the letter ‘ar’ in the first syllable. ‘ar-my,’ ‘par-ty,’ and ‘car-go,’ for example. At this point, do not give the pupils words containing ‘ar’ in the second syllable.

‘ar’ counts as simply one sound, /ar/, when counting the number of sounds in a word. You can recall this by counting sounds with sound buttons.

You can move on to the spelling of these words once you’ve mastered reading ‘ar’ words. Beginning spellers frequently make the mistake of writing the letter ‘r’ by itself for /ar/. This is a mismatch between letter name and sound. Learn that the letter name for the letter ‘r’ is pronounced /ar/, but that this is not the sound it represents. The sound represented by the letter ‘r’ is comparable to that of a puppy barking, /r/, as in ‘red’ and ‘ran.’ Remember the mnemonic ‘R in charge’: the letter ‘r’ must be in charge of a vowel when portraying /ar/, hence the vowel ‘a’ must come before the ‘r’ when writing /ar/.

Practice this to Learn R Controlled Words - Activity

The following are some of the activities included in the pack, or that you can make yourself:

  • Compare and contrast the words in which the letter ‘r’ appears after the letter ‘a.’
  • Rewrite words with a controlling ‘r’ following the vowel using sound substitution.
  • Rhyming, for example, car/bar. Students listen for rhyming words or draw lines between two columns of rhyming words. Students might also strive to write rhyming couplets, such as “I know that unless I had a bike or a car, I would not be able to go very far.”
  • Oral Phoneme Manipulation – e.g. bar-barn-bark, bar-barn-bark, bar-barn-bark, bar-barn-bark, bar-barn-bark, bar-barn-bark,
  • Word Sorts (words with/without R Controlled Vowels, words with a specified R Controlled Vowel representation, and so on).
  • Word – Picture Match
  • Word completion is when one or more sounds are missing from a word.
  • Sound Button Spelling — writing words with dots representing the number of sounds or dashes indicating the number of graphemes provided by the teacher (copying first, then from memory).
  • Independent Words from photos are spelled
  • Sentence Matching – Word Searches
  • Scrambled Sentences - give pupils the words that make up a sentence and ask them to put them in the correct order. This makes them pay attention to the text!

Other R Controlled Vowels Activities:

Oral blending and segmenting of words, such as p-ar-k (prior to writing letters).

Magnetic letters, letter tiles, wikki stix, and other materials are used to create words. You might want to consider using a phoneme frame.

Writing words phoneme by phoneme in alternating colours.

Looking for the focus R Controlled Vowel/s in a line of graphemes using visual tracking.

The learner uses a phoneme spotter to emphasise the focus R Controlled Vowel/s in text.

Words with R Controlled Vowels are read and written in captions.

Reading and writing sentences (copying, dictation, innovation).

Writing a paragraph, for example “Shirley is a small child. Her outfit consists of a purple skirt and a purple top. She enjoys twirling and whirling. “Her skirt is a whirlpool!”

Bingo, Snap, Concentration, Snakes and Ladders, 4-In-A-Row, and Hangman are among games that require pupils to concentrate on vowel-r pairings.

/er/ Words and sounds

/er/ is the second most commonly heard R Controlled Vowel sound. It is represented in a variety of ways. The following statement can be used to recall these representations and their relative frequency:

R controlled vowels - a sentence to help you recall the frequency of the letter er.

Because there are no rules directing choosing in one-syllable words, knowing the frequency of each representation can assist the learner make an educated judgment about the correct choice of representation. I recommend introducing ‘er, ur, and ir’ together at first, but focusing on the ‘er’ representation first so that pupils get confidence utilizing the more prevalent representation.

/Ur/ words and Sounds

Once a learner understands R Controlled Vowels, reading the ‘ur’ representation of /er/, or any other R Controlled Vowel representation, is not difficult. Spelling with the correct representation is much more difficult, thus more teaching will be needed in terms of frequency, intensity, and duration. When spelling /er/ in a syllable, there are no guidelines about when to use ‘er’ and when to use ‘ur.’ To develop visual and motor memory, students must participate in numerous activities that expose them to both representations. I also utilise mnemonics to assist kids remember some of the ‘ur’ terms. Some of the mnemonics are visual. You can, for example, make a u-turn. The letters ‘u’ in the phrases ‘curl’ and ‘curve’ resemble a curl or curve.