By Laura Payne
It might be hard to believe, but you can provide your children with an entertaining way to practice reading and spelling that incorporates phonemic awareness by watching Wheel of Fortune and playing along with the contestants.
A family TV game show night is something everyone will look forward to, and children will have so much fun that they won’t even realize they are learning about reading, spelling and sounds.
Some trivia about the letters and sounds of the English language will help you understand how Wheel of Fortune is a wonderful tool for helping your children practice reading and writing.
Letters
Have you ever wondered why the first letters contestant guess and the given letters in the Bonus Round Puzzle are R, S, T, L, N and E?
It is based on the frequency of occurrence of letters in the English alphabet. Learning about the more common letters and where they appear in words is a great way to help your children learn to read and spell.
An analysis by Oxford Dictionaries of the letters occurring in the words lists Q as the least common letter used in forming individual English words.
In comparison:
E is over 56 times more common than Q
R is over 38 times more common than Q
T is over 35 times more common than Q
N is almost 34 times more common than Q
S is over 29 times more common than Q
L is almost 28 times more common than Q
The analysis shows that E is the most common vowel and R, S, T, L and N are the most common consonants.
Sounds
Phonemic awareness is also enhanced by watching and playing along with contestants on Wheel of Fortune. When your children are trying to figure out what the words in the puzzles are, they will be thinking about the different sounds that letters can make as they fill in the blanks and sound out words. This is where knowledge of the frequency of occurrence of sounds in the English language comes into play.
Consonants
The top five consonant phonemes in order by frequency of occurrence are /t/, /n/, /r/, /l/ and /s/ according to Applied Phonetics: The Sounds of American English.
This illustrates another reason that the given consonants in the Bonus Round Puzzle are R, S, T, L and N.
Vowels
The number of consonant sounds compared to alphabet consonant letters is amazingly disparate from the number of vowel sounds compared to alphabet vowel letters.
There are 20 consonants in the alphabet, and there are 24 consonant sounds.
There are six vowels in the alphabet (A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y), yet there are 18 vowel sounds.
Phonemic Awareness
If you want to learn more about phonemes, check out this interactive phoneme chart.
Wheel Word Practice Example
T_ _ T _ _
T_ RT_ _
T_RT_E
T_RTLE
TURTLE
Now go have fun watching your children practice reading, spelling and sounds.
About Laura Payne
A self-confessed language nerd, Laura Payne is the mother of two boys, and she is a part-time English teacher. She has also done freelance writing about several topics including the structure and grammar of English.
