Third grade students encounter lengthier words than kindergarten through second grade students. The words often contain multiple syllables. Therefore, breaking a word into syllables is a key element to following vowel rules in third grade. When a syllable ends with a vowel anywhere in the word, not only just at the end of the word, the vowel is long. Students must identify the syllables in the word and search for the last letter. If the last letter of the syllable is a vowel then the sound is pronounced with its long sound. A word such as commotion is divided as com-mo-tion. Because the middle syllable ends with an o, the o says its name in the word pronunciation.
Third grade students have likely been exposed to the concept of vowels followed by consonants for at least a couple of years. This is a rule learned in most kindergarten phonics series. However, students will still need practice with identifying these vowel sounds. Any vowels in syllables that are followed by consonants will have a short sound. Students can check the vowels in each syllable to see if the letter following the vowel is a consonant. Words such as cat, pop and rip are all one syllable. The vowel in each word is followed by a consonant making the vowel short.
Third grade students can identify the sequence of letters as vowel, consonant and e. When this order occurs, the vowel is long. Some teachers refer to the e in the sequence as a "sneaky e" because it is silent and scares the vowel making it shout its name. Words such as wipe, shape and hope all have the vowel-consonant-e sequence. At the third grade level, students should also be introduced to words that have the sequence in words with suffixes that drop the e. Words such as making, biking and hoping.
Some vowels do not make long or short sounds. They make an irregular sound. This often occurs when the vowel is followed by the letter r. This happens in words such as paper, burst, bird, spark, horse and star.
Some words have two vowels side-by-side. When this happens only one vowel is heard. The first vowel says its name and the second one does not make a sound. Words such as treat and boat are examples. Some combinations of vowels are exceptions to this rule. Ou in spout and trout is an example. Words like heard and meant also do not follow the rule. Oi is another exception. Examples for this combination are spoil, boil and foil.