Cycle 74

74.1 New Sound

In this task, students will learn the sound /ĭŋ/ as in sing.

Remember, the /ŋ/ sound is a nasal consonant sound, like /n/, but it does not make the usual /n/ sound.

While /n/ is made by touching the tip of the tongue to the roof of the mouth right behind the teeth, /ŋ/ is made by touching the back of the tongue to the soft palate in the back of the mouth, as if setting up to make the /g/ sound.

When reading ing at a normal rate, we usually only say the /ĭŋ/ sounds and do not pronounce the /g/ at the end.

Even though this is three characters that represent two continuous sounds, we want students to recognize it as a single unit, which is why there is only a single dot beneath the three characters.

To help students with this, make sure your finger stays over the dot the whole time that you say the /ĭŋ/ sounds, rather than moving beneath the three characters.

You can also help students recognize ing as a single unit when you model the sound by holding the /ĭ/ sound longer than you hold the /ŋ/, so you end up saying /ĭĭĭŋ/.

74.3 Patterns

This task gives students more practice with reading words in a serif font when the words end with a silent e.