Home reading support

After speaking with a parent this morning about the home reading program, it occurred to me that it would be helpful for parents if I blogged about all the letter and sound blends and rules that we have been learning so that you can better support your child's reading at home.  So here it is:

Since my last update on this subject, we have learned that:
- ou makes a oo sound like in souris (which is not the same as the French u sound like in musique)
- on and om the same sound, which is a nasalized English long o vowel, like in maison *
-  eau/au/ô all make the English long o (oh) sound like in bâteau
- oi makes a  'wa' sound, like in oiseau
- en/an and em/am all make the same sound which the students associate with a grandmaman ou grandpapa who is hard of hearing and saying "en?" when someone is speaking*
- in/ain/ein and im/aim/eim are all the same sound which the students associate to the sound of a buzzer in a game show, it is a nasalized English long a sound like in cousin *
- on and om the same sound, which is a nasalized English long o vowel sound like in maison *
* It should be noted that with the nasal sounds, if there is another syllable afterwards, the letters that make that nasal sound break apart.  For example:  cou/sin (2 syllables), cou/si/ne (3 syllables - notice how in is broken apart now due to the new vowel).  It's a bit tricky to get used to that rule, but it will come! 

We have also been looking at word endings more closely in class, since there are so many word endings in French.  For example:
-ent is not pronounced if it is at the end of a verb (action word).  For example, marchent sounds like marche when it is read aloud
- er and ez at the end of the word are both pronounced as a long a vowel sound (ay)
- there are many silent letters at the end of words in French:  t, p, d, z, s, x
- sometimes words will end with -te or -de, which is not silent (for example, petit sounds like "peti" BUT petite sounds like "petit".


This week we are talking about ai and ei which is the same as è and ê which make the e sound like in the English word wet.  We will talk about a few exceptions to this rule (there are always exceptions in French!) next week.

I hope that this blog post will help you help your child with his/her reading at home! If you have any questions about this or anything else, please let us know.

In closing, here is a video of the song we will present to the seniors at the Cosmo's Senior Centre tomorrow after lunch:   Frère Jacques, rock'n roll style!