Reading: Phonics Camp
The / i / Phonogram:
Pita Bread
Today's Snack: Let's eat what we study
today! Make and eat pita (pronounced "pee ta") bread. You can cut it into
strips and dip them into hummus, or cut a pocket sideways into each small
circle of bread, and stuff it with your favorite sandwich "insides." "Pita" is
a foreign word, so it's not a regular phonics word as we study English. But you
can use phonics training to spell it correctly, too. Meanwhile, think about the
short / i / sound when you drink milk with it.
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Supplies:
Posterboard or large sheet of
newsprint | marker | dictionary
Ingredients and cooking supplies for
pita bread recipe, below
A phonogram is a written symbol - alphabet letters - for
a sound that we hear in the English language.
The
written symbol / i / can be pronounced two ways in English: ih . . . and eye.
The first pronunciation of the / i / phonogram is easy:
pig, lit, tip, bid. When the letter / i / is pronounced like "ih," we say that
that is the "short vowel sound" of the letter i.
The
second pronunciation sounds like you are saying "eye." We call this the "long
vowel sound" of the letter i. Or we say that it is the vowel i "saying its
name." Examples of words spelled with the second pronunciation of the phonogram
/ i / include idea, nice, light and Bible.
In
English, when the phonogram / i / is next to consonants in the same syllable,
it is usually pronounced in its short sound - ih. Look above, and you'll see
the examples - pig, lit, tip and bid - don't have any other vowels besides "i."
So they are spelled with an i and pronounced with the short-vowel sound for
"i."
The
words with the long-vowel pronunciation of the / i / -- may have only the
letter "i" as the syllable - as in the word "idea" - have other vowels besides
"I" in the same syllable - such as "nice" - have only one consonant along with
the "I" such as Bible, or use other phonograms which create the long-vowel
sound, such as "light." Notice that if you spell the word that we pronounce as
"light" just as it sounds -- / l / / i / / t / -- you actually get the word
"lit," the past tense of light. That's why they add the "gh" so that you can
tell that you mean "light" as in the present tense of the action, or the noun
form.
About
80% of the time, phonics rules work and you don't have to memorize anything.
But about 20% of the time, the word is an exception, and that's why we need to
study the phonics rules and these few exceptions. That sounds like a lot of
work, but actually, phonics is easier for reading and spelling than just
memorizing words one by one, as a lot of other reading methods demand.
Just
hang in there, and you'll get it very quickly.
Another
exception: when an "i" is followed by an "e," or comes in front of an "e," it's
may be pronounced like the long-vowel sound, as in "pie." But if there are more
letters after the "ie" or "ei" combination, then the pronunciation switches to
an "ee" sound. For example: piece . . . receive . . . thief.
Take
out a big piece of poster board, and make three columns:
/
i / as in ih / i / as in eye / i / exceptions
Now
start listing words under each column. Start with the example words provided,
above, and brainstorm for more. Discuss where they should go. The adult leader might
want to have a dictionary on hand, and show students how to look up spellings
to make sure the listings are correct. You can post this on the wall and add to
it as you go along.
Now
we're ready to take on the word "pita." List it under one of those exceptions!
It looks like it should be pronounced "p - eye - ta," but it actually rhymes
with "peeta."
Why
is this? Because it's a foreign word! It is not an English word. It originally
stems from a Greek word, and also is found in Spanish. In those languages, the
letter "i" is often pronounced like "ee." But you don't find a single letter
"I" pronounced like "ee" in English words.
So
once again, as our world gets more and more globalized, and more and more
foreign words creep into everyday use, a good reader, writer and speller has to
notice things about words, such as their backgrounds, and think very quickly
about the letters and sounds within them, in order to get them right.
Now
that we've worked up an appetite, let's make some yummy pita bread!
Pita Bread
(Makes 10 - takes about 2½
hours)
1 T. yeast
2 C. warm water
1 T. honey
2 tsp. salt
6 C. all-purpose flour
- In a large mixing bowl, dissolve the yeast in
the warm water. Stir in the honey. Add the salt and stir. Add the flour,
one cup at a time. Stir until you can't mix the dough any more.
- Rub flour onto the countertop. Place the lump of
dough on it. Knead (push with your hands and fingers) for 10 minutes, or
until the dough is very stretchy.
- Place the dough in a buttered bowl. Turn to coat
it on all sides of the bowl. Cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap.
- Let the dough rise until it is doubled in size,
about 2 hours.
- Put it back on the floured surface and punch it
down (this is the fun part!) and separate it into 10 lumps that you form
into balls. Let the balls rest for 15 minutes. Then push them on the
floured surface into circles that are about 7" across.
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place the pitas
on a cookie sheet on the lowest oven rack. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
- Wrap the finished pitas in a cloth napkin until
ready to serve.
