Children, Teaching

One of those great moments

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Thursday night, while tutoring A________ on one of the more difficult phonological concepts, I had one of those great moments that make teaching worthwhile.  A________, a third grader who had been totally confused and frustrated by schwa when taught it in school, excitedly declared mid-lesson: “I get it!  I understand schwa!”  And then, a bit later in the lesson, she looked up from her dictation page and said, “Thank you for teaching me about schwa,” then ducked her head and shyly added, “thank you for teaching me.”

2 thoughts on “One of those great moments”

  2. Schwa isn’t as hard as it seems – the sound of schwa is very similar to the short vowel sound of u, as in the word “up.” Any of the other four vowels (a, e, i, o) can make the sound of schwa when they occur in a closed syllable that is not stressed. For instance, in the word “wagon,” the o does not make its short vowel sound (as in the sound the first “o” makes in the word “octopus”), but rather makes the sound of schwa: the word sounds like “wagun.” This is because the first syllable, “wag,” receives the stress, or emphasis. Other good example words are “lemon” (pronounced “lemun”) and “denim” (pronounced “denum”).
    Hopefully that helped explain things a bit!

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