Tag Archives: Assessments

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What’s Schwa Got to Do with It?

Ooh, schwa. Sounds exotic. What is it?

Unless you teach elementary-aged kids, sing chorally, or are a word nerd (word nerds, unite!), you may not know what in the world a schwa is. Why should you care? Well, if you play Wordle, it’s a fantastic word to know (you’re welcome). And if you’ve ever thought that English is a ridiculously hard language to learn, you can thank the schwa—it’s a big part of why this is such a difficult language to read and spell.

Merriam-Webster defines schwa as “an unstressed mid-central vowel (such as the usual sound of the first and last vowels of the English word America),” wherein “mid-central” refers to the placement of the vowel in the mouth. The Oxford Dictionary definition is, “the unstressed central vowel (as in a moment ago), represented by the symbol /ә/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet.”

What does all this mean? Even though we know there are five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and sometimes a sixth (y), the schwa sound can be made by any of them. The key is identifying where it falls in a word (unstressed syllables in multisyllabic words). What, to the naked ear, may sound like a short u or i could actually be spelled with any of the vowels—and often not the ones you expect.

Learn from My Mistakes

It was time to teach the schwa sound to my students, and we practiced “calling words home” (a trick that helps them identify stressed and unstressed syllables), and then I set them loose with a worksheet to find the schwa in a bunch of different words. I’m not proud of it, but it was one of those lessons when I just needed an activity to fill the time, so I did what (some) teachers do in this type of situation: I looked for a free worksheet online. One that didn’t require my students to cut out and glue anything because, even though I have a very cute chicken-shaped receptacle for my glue sticks, I absolutely abhor using them. More glue gets on the table than on the paper, and what little does get on the paper doesn’t hold, so there are scraps of paper everywhere and a sticky table. But I digress.

The nice lady who created the worksheet explained that she had vetted every single word to ensure they all had a schwa syllable. Indeed, all were schwa words. But many of them are what I call hiding-in-plain-sight schwa words, and I did an inadequate job preparing my students for these. Within a few minutes of turning them loose with what should have been an independent activity, I was getting called to help them left and right because they were able to find the unstressed syllables, but then it appeared that many of the unstressed syllables had the vowels they were expecting. So how could they be schwas? I had missed one important detail about the schwa, which was right there in my teacher’s manual. UFLI Foundations defines schwa as a “quick, unstressed neutral vowel pronunciation, noted by the symbol /ә/. The purpose of schwa is to allow unstressed syllables to be said more quickly” (p. 371, emphasis added).

I had neglected to tell my students that, sometimes, the schwa vowel is, in fact, the one you think it is (depending on regional pronunciation, of course). What I mean by this is that I can sound out a word like muffin and figure out that its vowels are u and i (in that order). Does this word have a schwa? Yes, it’s the i. Say it. Which syllable gets the stress? muf Now, say the whole word, and when you do, really listen for that second vowel. Does is sound like a pure i (“ih”), or do you say it so quickly that its sound is indistinct? (I hope you said it’s indistinct, but if you think differently, I’ll get to that in a sec.)

Every multisyllable word has at least one unstressed syllable, and chances are, that unstressed syllable has the schwa sound. Try some more words: across, chicken, dentist, dragon, upon. Unstressed syllables make the schwa lazy; the vowel is kind of taking a nap and not doing its proper job. This was a hard concept for me to grasp because I am a trained singer, and when singing, I often modify the schwa sound to make it more palatable to the ear.

For example, when singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I pronounce the i in perilous as the pure short /i/, not /ә/. Even though no one goes around saying per-ih-lous, this is a choice that many singers make because the schwa sound is, quite frankly, ugly when it’s sung (especially when a note/vowel is sustained for any length). Because I’ve been singing for a lot longer than I’ve been teaching, I sometimes (unintentionally) speak in an affected way, making the schwa hard for me to detect. This happens even more when I’m sounding out a word in isolation with my students. Note to self: when teaching, take off your singer hat. When my students were trying to find the schwa in a syllable that clearly sounded like /ә/ and just as clearly was spelled with a u (like until), it’s no wonder they were confused. They thought that the schwa could never be the vowel that typically makes that sound. It’s important to teach that, even though it may sound like a short u (or i, as the case may be), the schwa prevents it from having its purest sound. In other words, when trying to be a schwa detective, be the opposite of a good singer.

How to Teach Schwa and Why It’s Important

First, being able to identify which syllables are stressed and unstressed is a great tool for readers to have in their literacy toolboxes. Because I have a very long last name that starts with an unstressed syllable, I’m familiar with people attempting to lead with a stressed syllable. And once they start pronouncing it incorrectly, they get stuck. I teach my students what stressed and unstressed syllables are by using their names. I pretend they’re very far away, then call them in a sing-song voice. When I do, which syllable do I naturally stretch out? That’s the stressed syllable. (Kids love this because they discover that many of them have one or more schwa sounds in their names.) We can use this same exercise with multisyllabic words. If emergent readers are decoding a word for the first time and it sounds wrong, they’re likely emphasizing the wrong syllable. They need to “call” it the other way, with the stress on the other syllable. Then all kinds of light bulbs start to go off. (To see exactly what I mean, here’s a FREE video of me teaching the schwa sound.)

Second, if students don’t learn about the schwa, they might be prone to spell words like nickul (nickel) or baskit (basket). And while spell check is out there to fix a lot of these mistakes, it can’t help when someone is wildly off. I teach with the simple view of reading approach, in which sounds (phonemes) and word parts (syllables) are taught in an explicit, systematic manner. The spelling patterns are more important than the individual words because they’re like keys, and once readers have the keys to decode, they can “open up” all kinds of new words. Once I’ve taught a spelling pattern (like the schwa sound), I include it in word work, games, and texts, and students gain reading comprehension. It’s a formula that looks like this:

RC = D x LC

in which Reading Comprehension is the product of Decoding and Language Comprehension.

Why It Matters (My Soapbox Moment)

The more students engage with and experience these words, the better they will understand and retain them. The better readers they will be. The better spellers and writers. But what about those students who struggle? They may have the reading strategies down cold, but they just can’t get the hang of spelling, no matter how hard they try. They are the kids who routinely fail spelling tests (in the schools that still give them) or who lose a letter grade because their essays, while including all the right content, look like they were written by a three-year-old. If you’ve read my blog before, you know how I feel about tests (don’t like them one bit), although I grudgingly understand why we do have to have some way to quantify what students know.

I am a formative assessment kind of gal, and one great way to give this kind of assessment was introduced to me in a math workshop, of all things. While I was attending in the hopes of helping my kiddos who struggle with math (and I did get a lot of great tips for that—never fear!), I came away with a much stronger sense of how to help all my students in any subject.

When we throw concepts at students and expect them to swallow (and regurgitate) them with no opportunity for reflection, how much are they getting out of the lesson? How much do they retain? The answer is often just enough to get them through the unit test—if that. What I learned from Dr. Yeap Ban Har from [Math]odology is that the answer does not matter nearly as much as the journey to searching for the answer. He uses the analogy of going to the airport. Some students are on their way there (need assistance). Some have arrived at the airport and are ready to board (emergent). Others are at cruising altitude (independent). One way to gauge which level of “airport” readiness students have achieved is by giving them the opportunity to show their learning through reflective journals. These can take many different forms, from simply describing what they learned to turning it into a story or letter to a friend to… well, whatever way a student needs to express him- or herself. If education across the board could shift in this direction, I think great things could happen for our young minds.

Bringing it back to the schwa sound, I would much rather a student explore and find words in texts they’re reading, write them out, and play with syllable stresses than memorize a list of words for a spelling test. If they get the vowel wrong, at least they’re thinking. We’ll read some great literature together, and they’ll suddenly start seeing words with schwas everywhere, and the dots will start to connect. If you’re a teacher, wouldn’t you much rather spend your time reading great texts to your students than drilling them for a test? If you’re a parent, doesn’t that sound like the kind of education you’d like your child(ren) to have? With the right exposure, the right techniques, they’ll become much more competent and confident readers, writers, learners, and thinkers.

For more about schwa and all kinds of other spelling patterns, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Mrs C Loves to Read. For two days only (August 6-7, 2024), get up to 25% off everything in my TpT store using the code below.

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In America, an A Is an A, and a B Is a D

Dusting off the top of my soapbox and climbing on…

I’m on team of teachers who work exclusively with students with learning differences. We meet throughout the year to evaluate our students’ progress, problem-solve, and commiserate with each other over things we can’t change, such as what goes on at home. Many parents remain in denial about their children’s needs, even with a diagnosis in hand. One problem with learning differences is that they can be elusive. Okay, yes, you can tell that a child doing log rolls across the floor has the H (hyperactivity) of ADHD, but dyslexia, dyscalculia, anxiety? These are not nearly as obvious, and students with high IQs and good coping skills can fly under the radar for a long time. In some ways, it might be easier for children who have a physical difference because people can see it and adjust their expectations. For example, parents of a blind child might be disappointed that he won’t grow up to be a professional baseball player, but they understand his limitations. Not so with some of my students. I’ve known parents to name drop with the universities they attended, as if their impressive alma maters will somehow make it possible to “cure” their kids—like maybe I’ll try harder now that I know what’s at stake. They can’t accept that their kids might not be Harvard material because if their kids don’t follow in their footsteps, then what’s the point?

Think I’m being harsh? How many people do you know who have fallen out with their parents because they didn’t live up to their unreasonable expectations? Or even expectations that seem reasonable but don’t work for that particular child. Unfortunately, I can think of too many.

Reflecting on the worst of the discipline problems I dealt with this past year, they boil down to two categories:

  1. Parents don’t want to be bothered by child, so child seeks negative attention over no attention; and
  2. Parents don’t understand child, so child lashes out when parents try to force the square child into a round hole.

Forget about #1 for now—that’s a whole series of books unto itself. But #2 often happens with the best of intentions. The issue isn’t that parents don’t love their children (although one could argue that sometimes parents are attempting to fulfill their unrealized dreams vicariously through said children); the issue is that parents need to wake up.

My first wake up call came over 10 years ago (read about my second one here). My husband and I have no learning disabilities and are fairly intelligent people. We’re both college graduates, both motivated and self-disciplined. If we didn’t achieve something (academically), it was on us. When we had our first child, we did what “good” parents do: we kept him away from screens, read to him, fed him healthy foods, made sure he got plenty of sleep, gave him educational toys. He even started going to school at the age of three. There is not any reason in the world why this child with this life shouldn’t know his letters, except he didn’t. He is dyslexic. This is not something we could have bought our way out of or prevented, and it will be part of his identity his whole life. Just the possibility of him being dyslexic scared me because all I knew were a pile of myths and misinformation, and I thought trying harder and tutoring and encouraging him would fix the “problem.”

His problem had more to do with me than himself. Once I took the time to learn what dyslexia really is and how Peter is wired, I got the right help for him and realized that my expectations for him to follow in my academic footsteps put way too much pressure on him. He put in all the effort, but tests are not made for kids like him. Project-based learning is more his speed, but for all we educators like to talk about differentiation and equity (both great things—don’t get me wrong!), our American school system has yet to get with the times. And after all, it’s not as easy to assess a great, failed science project where lots of learning occurs than penciled-in bubbles on a scantron.

And even if we were able to assess every child in a way that took into account his or her own particular learning profile, that wouldn’t magically make kids who struggle good at every subject. For those who need help in one area or another or—gasp—only muster a B, are they unfulfilled as humans?

At one of my team’s meetings, we were talking about how great one of these “B” students was doing—a student with “we went to this impressive college” parents, so Bs aren’t acceptable—when one of my colleagues said, “In America, an A is an A, and a B is a D.” How right she was (and thanks for the great post title)! The opposite of apathy, this stance is that if you’re not achieving the top at [fill-in-the-blank], then you might as well have not tried to begin with. It’s even true of myself—cough—if I’m to be honest. When I was in grad school, I started to panic if I thought my work might earn less than 98%. And why? My grades were between my professors and me—no one else knew. It’s a hard habit to break, caring about grades. And it’s not that getting good grades is bad—I’m really proud of my kiddos (at home and in the classroom) when they do well. But I’m also proud of them when they make a good effort, when they take a risk by going outside their comfort zones, when they make mistakes and learn from them. Unfortunately, our esteemed institutes of higher learning don’t seem to think that way. Even state universities (like my alma mater) are turning away great kids. Can you blame Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman for doing what they did to fudge their kids’ college admission documents? Well, yeah, I can and do, but you get my point. If people with all the money in the world can’t get their kids into the schools they want, what are the rest of us lowly, normal parents to do? (Secondarily, why do they want those schools for their kids? Would their lives amount to anything at a different school—or no school?)

Those aren’t rhetorical questions. Here we go:

We can be proud of our kids for being who they are, period. I’m not talking about giving up. Kids should still be motivated to give their best effort, but even more importantly, they should be nurtured in ways that allow them to discover their true passions. I’m proud of a mom I know for doing just that. I was catching up on what her daughter’s been up to lately. This girl is a phenomenal singer and actress, and I was surprised to hear that she’s not pursuing the stage. “But it’s not her passion,” her mom said. Wow. If only more parents would realize this. Just because their kids are good at sports or ballet or academics doesn’t mean their future is decided based on those things. I feel like our culture is making this even harder now that young athletes are getting paid at the collegiate level. It certainly would be hard to turn down free college tuition and a giant paycheck, especially at the impressionable age of 18 when the lure of the almighty dollar is so powerful.

When I was in my 20s, I struggled with the desire to be at home with my children and my (in)ability to afford it. My husband just about killed himself, working extra to pay the bills, while I floundered at a mediocre freelance writing career (if you can call it that). I’m a good writer and editor, and I got some business, but it wasn’t nearly enough to pay for diapers, much less all the other expenses we incurred with two small children. A couple of my friends were court reporters and told me that, with my typing and proofreading skills, I would be a natural. I could “be my own boss” and make a six-figure income. It was very, very tempting. But when I thought about leaving my babies and spending all day in a courtroom…my soul shrank away from the idea. I know it’s a great job for some people but not for me, even though the idea of that salary was so alluring.

While I tried to figure out what in the world to do with my life, I began volunteering at Peter’s school, and when they put out a plea for substitute teachers, I thought that was something I could do and make a little extra money. When my younger son started attending there, too, it just so happened that they had a full-time job for me. In a very unexpected way, I found my love of teaching (something I said I would never do)… and it started with saying no to something much more lucrative. In fact, if we think about salaries, you could say I turned down an A for a C. But if it means making less money to be fulfilled, that doesn’t even feel like a choice.

Yes, encourage your kids to always do their best. Lead by showing them the right choices instead of the easy or flashy ones. Have compassion (on them and yourself) when setbacks happen. What did we learn?

That grades are for school, and there they should stay.

That tests are for people who are good at taking them.

That a life worth living can’t be documented on a resume or a paycheck.

Check out my TpT (Teachers Pay Teachers) store, Mrs. C Loves to Read, to see what I teach in the classroom.