Bossy 'R' (ar and or)

There's a problem at the R Farm today and Dee and Kala have arrived to help! Farmer R needs to wrangle all the AR’s and OR’s back to the words in which they belong. However, Dee and Kala are not sure where they go. Let's help them by learning about "Bossy R, AR and OR". We have learned that syllables are words or word parts that have one vowel sound and take one puff of air to say. You might already know that this type of syllable is called R controlled or Bossy R. It has one vowel followed by the letter R You might remember that bossy means to take control or tell someone what to do. Well, the same thing happens with bossy R syllables! The letter R takes control of the vowel before it and tells it what to say. Even though the vowel speaks, the R changes the vowel sound a little bit. The R after the A and O makes both these vowels sound a little different than their normal sounds. Let's look at AR first. It says /ar/ in the beginning, middle and end of words, as in ark, yard, or car. When you hear the /ar/ sound, it is almost always spelled AR. Now let's look at OR, which says /or/ in the beginning, middle and end of words like orbit, horn, and for. OR is the most common way to spell the sound /or/. Now that Dee and Kala know more about AR and OR, let's help them put the pairs back into the correct words! The first word missing its bossy R pair is BARN. Which bossy R do you hear in the barn? AR or OR? AR because the sound in barn is /ar/! How about the word FORK? Which bossy R do you hear in fork? AR or OR? OR because the sound in fork is /or/! Now that Dee and Kala have put back all the bossy R syllables, let's remember! Today we learned about more Bossy R syllables, AR and OR. The letter R took control of the vowel before to it. AR says /ar/ like in farm. And, OR says /or/ like in corn. "Phew! That was HARD WORK, Kala!"