How to Teach Floss Ending Blends with Color-Coded Short Vowel Flashcards
This seems simple, but is it? NO. Teaching the floss rule is not an easy thing to do. Let’s unpack this. First rule number one, when a one-syllable word ends in f, l, or s, double that final f, l, or, s.
Easy! Got it. Then what about pal, gal, Sal, roll, poll?
I had to look that up. Turns out pal, gal, Sal are non-formal words.
Roll, poll are words that sound like long vowels and then there is the word doll that sounds like a short vowel. This now seems harder to teach to emergent readers. We need to be careful not to call this a rule. Floss is more like a short vowel indicator.
Then there is the very common word /all/. The letter a is not saying “ah” like in cat or pal. The vowel a has changed to the short o sound. Like in the word boss.
The red colored cards in the game all make the short a sound. The orange-colored cards all make the short o sound. The tricky ‘all’ word family has dual colored cards, the letter a (red) making the short o sound (orange). This helps create a color link to the sound patterns.
There are many ways to sort these cards to play different levels of the game. Take a look at the cards here.
The long o words like poll, roll, troll, have a dark blue color, instead of orange. This set also has a large collection of pseudowords. A good mix of digraphs, trigraphs, and floss endings.
You may all like this game. CVCC ending blends card game.
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