Crypto-Knights #2: Vowels & Howls‪!‬

Welcome back to the world of the Crypto-Knights!  Almost any musician will tell you that you need to know the fundamentals before you can begin to improvise and learn on the fly -- reading is no different, and yet it is too often the case that our young readers are sent into the academic fray without basic skills to tackle words from the ground up.   In this issue we continue our work on some of the basic, largely unknown ways in which English spelling actually makes a fair amount of sense, if you know the rules that are operating just below the surface. The idea here is to focus mostly on letters that are flexible, meaning they act differently in relation to different letters. 


We began last issue with silent e, not only because it's a commonly challenging decoding rule, but because it gives us a jumping-off point for much of the English vowel system as a whole. Also, it warms us up to the idea that certain letters condition others in interesting ways. 

In this issue, we introduce the lesser-know fact that actually all English vowels function in the way silent e does much of the time.  For instance, we might consider how the word rob becomes robe when e is added, and then becomes robot when the second o forces the first o to say its name just like the e in robe.  Let’s contrast this with the word rabbit. Because there is more than one letter separating the vowels, the a is always short (people say words in a wonderful variety of ways, and we think that’s great! But we doubt anyone says "ray-bit").  While this sort of reasoning is unfortunately not foolproof  (as with most English spelling rules), we teach this sort of rule-based reading to give readers a good starting-point for decoding new words, and to train them to tackle words actively and strategically, knowing they are armed with fairly reliable if not bulletproof foreknowledge.   

These two issues wrap up the focus on vowels. Be sure to join us for issue 3-5, where we apply the same logic to tricky consonants, and begin to introduce more complex concepts in reading comprehension, vocabulary building, and writing.  Many thanks, and enjoy!