Name Game!

For those of you working with young children, the most important words you collect and work with will be their names (and the names of their friends, classmates, and family members)! This week, I hope to use our names to show you what a wonderful resource they can be for phonics and word study! While young children use them to learn the alphabet and also their initial and final consonant sounds, we will use them to do some advanced word study learning.

For those of you who have Eden as your case study student, you will need to learn about accented and unaccented syllables. Because Eden is a very good speller, this is where she is making a lot of her mistakes. (And this is where a lot of adults still make a lot of mistakes, too!)

So ... what are accented and unaccented syllables, you ask! Let's start with our names. I have a name -- well, actually two names -- that are constantly misspelled. My first name is spelled Meredith, not Merideth! My last name is Whittaker, not Whitiker! One reason that the e in Meredith gets misspelled a lot in that it is a vowel in an unaccented syllable that doesn't make a true long or short vowel sound. Instead it's more of what's called a schwa sound. It's the same thing with the a that gets misspelled in Whittaker. It doesn't make a true long or short vowel sound anymore!

Remember how hard it was for some of us to distinguish between long and short vowels a few weeks ago when I asked you to create the word sort? That's because a lot of you were selecting really cool long words that had multiple syllables, including unaccented syllables in which there wasn't really a true long or short vowel sound. (Folks who chose one-syllable words seemed to have very little trouble!) For advanced spellers, long words with unaccented syllables is where spelling often gets tricky!

So how do you tell what the unaccented syllables are in your name? Here's a trick from the authors of Words Their Way that you can teach students .... Put your hand lightly under your chin. When you say your name, feel for when you jaw drops. Try it with my name, "Meredith." Do you feel your jaw drop slightly when you say, /Mair/? That's the accented (or stressed) syllable. That is the part of my name that usually gets spelled right!! Your jaw doesn't drop for the final two syllables so they are both unaccented syllables. (Try it with Molly. Do you feel your jaw drop for the first syllable? This is the accented one.)

For this week's post, let's use our names to do some advanced learning and also some review. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. See if you can figure out what the accented syllable is in both your first name and your last name. (Buddies, make sure to check your partner's work and to help, if needed!) Do people ever misspell the vowels in your name? Is it in the accented or unaccented syllable?

2. Review the key terminology below by finding a name on our class roster that fits the category.

• Can you find 3 names that have consonant digraphs in them? (Make sure to write both the number and the actual names.)

• Can you find 3 names can you find that have consonant blends in them?
  

• Can you find 3 names that have a two-letter vowel team in them? (Check Chapter 5 if you need clarification. I'm looking for vowel teams, not just words that have two vowels in them.)

• Can you find 3 names that have r-controlled vowels in them?
  

• Give one name with a true long vowel sound in it.

• Give one name with a true short vowel sound in it.
  

BONUS (for an extra credit point!)

• I could only find one name with a split-vowel digraph in it. Can you find it? The first person to find this (judged by the time stamp on the blog) wins a bonus point!

Here are the names:

Alyssa Brooks

Caitlin Collins

Jessica Collins

Marlaina Cruz

Marcy Ebel

Kim Griffith

Terri Houdeshell

Heather Johnson

Jennifer Maclean

Erica Mathie

Zenaida Ortiz

Kelly Rigda

Jerica Schick

Brianna Schnur Meredith Whittaker

Susan Widener

Joe Yagielo

Good luck! Please consult Chapter 5, if needed!