Weekly Content Update | Letter Blends & Counting Coins
This Week at Gemiini
This week our film team finished work on a set of clips teaching articulation for various vowel + r letter blends. These clips contribute to our huge library of content teaching articulation for dozens of common letter blends and spelling patterns. We have also uploaded new clips that model how to count mixed coins.
Letter Blends and the Vocalic R Sound
In speech therapy, treating the /r/ sound is notoriously difficult. It is typically categorized as a consonant, but when it follows a vowel in speech, the /r/ sound takes on properties of the vowel that comes before it. Because of this unique characteristic, the /r/ sound can be divided into several unique vowel + r sounds. These sounds are sometimes called Vocalic R phonemes, and they include the following sounds:
ER as in teacher
AIR as in hair
AR as in star
IRE as in umpire
OR as in door
EAR as in deer
When we bring reading and spelling into the mix, teaching pronunciation of these sounds gets trickier. Because English is not a phonetic language (letters in the English alphabet are not always pronounced the same way), each Vocalic R sound has more than one spelling. For example, when read aloud, the er at the end of teacher sounds the same as ir in stir, or ur in hurt. In addition to mastering the motor planning necessary to produce each sound correctly, students need to know which letter blends produce each sound.
Our newest blends clips use close-ups and text highlights to model articulation and teach letter blends for spelling patterns associated with Vocalic R sounds. Clips in this format are a great addition to assignments for students who are practicing speech, spelling, or reading. These clips are located in Spoken Language → Articulation → Sounds.
Counting Coins
Counting coins involves an assortment of skills. Students must know the value of currency, they should be able to recognize coins and sort them by value, and they must be able to skip count and perform basic addition.
To help students who are learning to count money, our Counting Mixed Coins format generalizes the process of figuring out the total value of a group of coins by sorting the coins from largest to smallest and summing their values. These clips are located in Reading, Writing, & Academic → Numbers & Math → Counting → Basic Counting.
For help teaching articulation, letter blends, or for any other questions about using Gemiini with your child, please schedule a free call with one of our product specialists. If you're having technical trouble or need help getting started, check out the articles in our Knowledge Base. If you're looking for clips that don't exist on the site, please send a content request to videos@gemiini.org.