Schwa is the unclearly pronounced vowel sound that occurs in multisyllabic words. It is the most common sound in English and can be represented by every vowel grapheme.
Schwa is a spelling issue not a reading issue. If students can decode a word and it is in their oral vocabulary, they usually have no difficulty ‘tweaking’ the word to pronounce it correctly.
The problem with spelling the schwa sound links back to the fact that if can be represented by any vowel grapheme. So how do we help students with this problem?
- Help students break the word into syllables and then identify the unstressed syllable and the schwa sound.
- Introduce the concept of a ‘spelling voice’ that speaks very clearly and correctly whereby the schwa grapheme is pronounced as it occurs in stressed syllables. For example, stress the /e/ sound when saying ‘frozen’.
- Link the schwa grapheme to a key picture cue. For example, if the picture cue for ‘ai’ is rain, you could say , “It rains on the mountain,” making sure the ‘ai’ in mountain is pronounced as /ay/ rather than schwa.
- Make links to other words with a similar pattern. For example, ‘mountain can be linked to ‘curtain’, ‘captain’ and ‘certain’ – I am certain the captain will close the curtain in the cabin on the mountain when it rains. Again, make sure students are pronouncing the ‘ai’ as /ay/ in each of these words.
In the Cracking the ABC Code spelling programs the schwa is clearly indicated and linked to the common pronunciation of the grapheme.
See the following post for additional information: What is Schwa?