In Letterland, ‘Robot R’ gets his brothers to help him to steal vowels in words. His brothers are ‘Arthur Ar’, ‘Orvil Or’, ‘Ernest Er’, ‘Urgent Ur’ and ‘Irving Ir’. When they stand after a vowel in words they often catch it and put it in their net and report back to ‘Robot R’ on their radios, saying their second name, ‘ar’, ‘or’, ‘er’, ‘ur’ or ‘ir’. The poor vowel is too shocked to speak in the word after that.
The class set out to find all these robbers that steal vowels in words. The children made posters for each of the Robot Robbers to help them look for them. They worked by themselves or with a partner. When they thought of words that had their robot sound in, they wrote them on their poster. They also found extra words in their reading books and around the classroom. Those robbers are certainly very busy with stealing vowels… they found a lot of words! Click ‘read more’ below to see photos of the children busy making their posters and to see all of the words that they have discovered that have these sounds in.
The children also each wrote a story that included lots of ‘ar’ words. Here is one of them called, ‘The Party Centre’. Come and read all their stories. They are hanging up in their Hummingbird classroom.
We learnt that ‘er’, ‘ur’ or ‘ir’ all sound the same when we read them but it’s tricky to know which one to use when you are writing. Look at ‘Ernest Er’s’ legs. He is very fast so is often at the end of words, like after September, runner, soccer, her and summer.
So what does Robot R and his brothers want with all the vowels? What do you think? Do vowels next to the letter r always get stolen? Robot R also likes to steal a special consonant too. Do you know which one?
After all this talk of robbers, it was no surprise to hear that children were playing ‘Robot Robbers’ in the playground at playtime. It was a Letterland version of cops and robbers with some children being the vowels, who were being chased by other children who were robbers! Isn’t learning fun!