Ure words

[Benjibobo]

I have an interview tomorrow Nd I have been asked to teach a ten minute phonics session focussing on the ure sound.

There is a suggested list of words: pure, sure, mature, assure, insure, cure, manure. I'm a bit concerned that the year one group I am working with will find these words very tricky and am a little unsure how to teach the sound and give definitions in ten minutes. How do explain insure to a year one child...help!

I just filtered my list of the 7000 most used English words and the only additional words with a stress -ure ending I could find were
endure, lure, obscure, procure, secure.

The more common sound for -ure endings is an unstressed /ur/er/:
adventure, agriculture, architecture, capture, caricature, conjure, creature, culture, departure, expenditure, exposure, failure, feature, figure, fissure, fracture, furniture, future, gesture, injure, lecture, legislature, literature, manufacture, measure, miniature, mixture, nature, picture, pleasure, pressure, procedure, puncture, scripture, signature, structure, temperature, torture, treasure, venture, vulture.

Does that answer the OP's question Masha?
No.

I would focus on the influence of magic e rather than a list of words. Build the wall, make the magic jump, etc. Ask the kids to come up with words rather than you give them. Split into 'real' words and 'nonsense' words. Practise writing them on whiteboards with the wall and the magic. Make links to the other changes magic e makes. All that'll take longer than 10 mins!

I would be hesitant to use "magic e" as if the school uses systematic synthetic phonics, eg letters and sounds (which is where that list is from) then they won't use magic e.

I wouldn't worry about definitions - phonics doesn't focus on comprehension, for better or worse.

You should start by doing flashcards of the phase 3 sounds to revisit and revise what they know already. A good way to talk about "ure" is emphasising that it's "three letters, one sound." See if they know an action for it - jolly phonics doesn't do one, so you might like to make your own up if they don't know an action.

After that, a "buried treasure" type game would be good - real words and fake ones. I would avoid the words like "sure" that are tricky, eg the "s" doesn't make the usual sound. So you could do "pure" "mature" "cure" "manure" you will need to mention what they mean but I wouldn't go into detail as it's not the focus of the session, eg "manure's a posh word for poo" would do.

To finish, you could give them short sentences on card including those words to read in pairs or read one or two on the board all together. Make sure that the rest of the sentence is fairly straight forward, eg CVC words.

HTH

Isn't magic e called a split digraph nowadays? sounds painful

Not very helpful!

Yes, it has been re-christened... ure isn't one though.

I'm in Scotland. We don't have the same curric - sorry.

I was trying to think of words that can have the normal u sound but 'say their name' with e, and I couldn't think of any!

Surely ure is the same principle? Does it show that I'm a KS2 teacher?

That's the worse sound to teach!!! Also early in Y1 to be introducing long vowel phonemes. Do NOT say 'magic e' - it's a big no no now!!! Ure is a long vowel phoneme (phase 3), not a split digraph (phase 5.) Phonics play burried treasure game is good. Do thumbs up if it's a real word and thumbs down if it's a made up word. Will show you've thought about the new year 1 phonics test that they will have to take at the end of the year and getting them used to reading non-words. You could maybe say you will pick two children you notice trying really hard to read the words to come to the IWB and feed the last 2 words to the correct dragon (there are usually 10 words.) Red is made up words and green is for real words. This will help with participation and behaviour management. You will need to be confident that you can explain what each of the words that come up mean, as it is unlikely the children will be able to do this themselves! I always talk about pure apple juice and they love finding out what manure is! Make sure you are confident pronouncing the ure sound too. Also terminology - long vowel phoneme, grapheme etc. Good luck!

worst*

GW - why is the 'magic e' a no-no now - DD is in P3 (Scotland) and they teach using phonics and have been taught the 'magic e'.

I'm sure you can select to play the buried treasure game here using specific phonemes www.phonicsplay.co.uk/BuriedTreasure2.html

Secure might not be a bad one - is that properly fastened on, is it secure?

Good luck!

GW279 - "ure" is part of phase 3, and in theory they should have completed that in reception. It is a horrible sound to teach though.

I skip over this fairly quickly in phase 3!

Apart from pure, cure and manure I can never think of any other words that follow the phonic rules up to that point in phase 3. Even 'mature' has a 'ch' sound in it when spoken.

So I think you have been set up op! Good luck!

juniper - do you mean words like tube and cute? The 'ure' sound I think is different because you pronounce 'r' as 'ar' and not 'ruh'. (If that makes sense)

BirdyBedtime - I think it's been banned because it's misleading but maybe Google it to check. They are very big on correct phonics terminology down here!

OP good luck with your interview tomorrow. I can't believe they're making you do ure. It's probably my least favourite! Year 1 are a lovely year to teach though.