Yvette Manns discusses the schwa and its importance. She shares insights from her book, The Not So Lazy Schwa, and explains how it helps children understand the schwa sound. Yvette also tells all about National Schwa Day, a holiday she created to celebrate language and literacy in schools. She provides suggestions for celebrating the day and highlights the resources available in the National Schwa Day toolkit.
Takeaways
We wrote a book! The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night
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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.
Yvette Manns discusses the schwa and its importance. She shares insights from her book, The Not So Lazy Schwa, and explains how it helps children understand the schwa sound. Yvette also tells all about National Schwa Day, a holiday she created to celebrate language and literacy in schools. She provides suggestions for celebrating the day and highlights the resources available in the National Schwa Day toolkit.
Takeaways
We wrote a book! The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night
Don't miss an episode! Sign up for FREE bonus resources and episode alerts at LiteracyPodcast.com
Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.
You're listening to Melissa and Laurie Love Literacy. Did you know that the schwa sound is the most common vowel sound in the English language? Did you know there's a national schwa day on April 7th? Today we'll be talking to children's author and founder of schwa day, evette Manns, about her book the Not-So-Lazy Schwa and how to celebrate schwa day. Hi teacher friends. I'm Laurie and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.
Speaker 2:We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.
Speaker 1:We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.
Speaker 2:Laurie, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone. We're so excited because it's almost National Schwa Day and we get to celebrate this special occasion on today's episode.
Speaker 2:We're here today with Evette Manns, who is an educator and author from Atlanta, georgia. She wrote some fun children's books that we're going to talk about today about schwa, heart words, floss rule and she is the founder of National Schwa Day. So we cannot wait to hear all about these fun things. So welcome Evette.
Speaker 3:Hello, thank you so much for having me, melissa and Laura. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:So we recently talked about sound walls in two previous episodes episodes 185 and 186. And we are going to talk about the schwa today, but we know the schwa lives in a sound wall. So, evette, I hope that you will kick us off by sharing what is a schwa and then eventually tell us where schwa lives in a sound wall.
Speaker 3:So schwa is more than just a word that teachers and students and speech pathologists love to say, but schwa is something that is so important in our language. So if you look in the top of your vowel valley or if you look in the dictionary or the international phonetic alphabet, you see this upside down E. And when you look at your vowel valley you're like who is this lazy guy hanging out in the middle of my vowel valley in my sound wall? All right, and so what we see in that upside down letter E is the diacritical mark for schwa. So a schwa is a neutral, unstressed sound and it is articulated in a more relaxed and unstressed manner than short U and short I. So it sounds like a or in it. And so schwa is initially and commonly referred to as a lazy sound, but it is actually the most common sound in the English language. So schwa is so important to teach because of it being just the most common sound in English language.
Speaker 3:And there was some research that came out from Yule in 96 that talks about how schwa can take the place of 20% of all vowel sounds in multi-syllabic words. So it's important, right, it's important 20% of those words after we explicitly teach our students. You know all the ways that vowels can be articulated in words. We have to teach our students to flex the vowel sound and unemphasized or unstressed syllables to make it sound more natural. And that's where schwa comes into, say the day. Schwa can really impact our students, decode and encode and comprehend multi-syllabic words, and I just thought that was so interesting once I learned about it. So yeah, that's what a schwa is. You can hear it in so many words like family, bacon, parrot. Even when Y is functioning as a vowel, like in vinyl or syringe, you hear a schwa taking the place of the Y as it's working as a vowel. So schwa is everywhere and schwa needs a holiday to celebrate how busy schwa is.
Speaker 2:I love it. So we're going to talk first about the book that you wrote. So, after listening to you, the title of the book is the Not so Lazy Schwa. So I can see where you're going with this title now that you've explained all of the functions of the schwa. But I want you to just tell us all about your book. So what made you write this book? All about schwa? What's it about? And it's really written for kids. So how does it help kids understand the schwa?
Speaker 3:Great question. So I came up with this story when I was working as a dyslexia practitioner in the clinic. I've been a language and literacy professional for years I've been in literacy education for over a decade and a half and when I was working with some of my students in exploring multi-syllabic words, a couple of students were having trouble understanding why the vowel didn't sound in the way that I had talked to them. So I came up with this story. You know, I'm like there's a schwa and schwa is lazy and and as over the years as I worked with more students and parents and teachers got a hold of this story, it became a story they kind of told to their kids. So other teachers said, hey, you should make this into a book for kids. So I thought about it and did it and multiple revisions later in professional illustrations, finally got it published in January of 2022. And I'm so excited about it because it's such an important part of language, right, and we always talk about schwa being lazy, but when I think of schwa, I think of the good, the bad and the lazy. You know, we usually say the good, the bad and the ugly. So the good time when we want to demonstrate the uses of a schwa is when we're teaching multi-syllabic words. For example, if we have a word like salad, we don't want to say salad, we just say salad and make it sound more natural. The bad we don't want to include a schwa when we're articulating individual phoneme sounds. So if you've seen the 44 Phoneme video on YouTube, I'm articulating those phonemes with how they would sound in isolation. But many teachers show your students, you know, clip the sounds, don't say just say, just articulate the pure sound. And then the lazy schwa has to be unstressed and relaxed. So I remind teachers to not over articulate the schwa sound so it doesn't need to be too stressed when it's sounding and articulated like the weaker or more neutral version of short I or short you. It just sounds like a or a, it sounds like it flows very well. So all that is synthesized into kid-friendly information in this story and it's a really fun story.
Speaker 3:It starts out with schwa just being a lazy guy hanging around and then you see on the second page and third page his friend slash comes to visit him. Kind of went back and forth about naming him slash or Virgil, because Virgil is the formal name for those slashes that denote that is the phoneme articulation versus the graphemic representation. But I worked with some kids and they said slash is a little cooler, so named him slash. So slash goes to tell schwa you know, you've been in the house for a little while, you should come with me and you know, come in exercise with the consulates to help them exercise the sounds that they create. So Schwa decides to get out the house and go visit the consulates, but when he does he adds the schwa sound onto the individual letter names and, let me excuse me, the individual letter sounds.
Speaker 3:So this is my favorite page here, because P decides to give schwa a piece of his mind and so he says wait a minute, my sound isn't. I would make my favorite color putt ink, or my favorite food putt Asta, or my favorite animal a putt. And that doesn't sound right, schwa, you have to leave, you're messing up our sounds. And so poor for schwa. This poor baby just takes off running and so devastated. But he runs and runs until he looks around to see where he is and finds himself in Val Valley.
Speaker 1:Val Valley is where he's going to stay.
Speaker 3:Yes, he's going to stay. So, although Val Valley the vowels that were in Val Valley were going to build letters, they invited schwa. They were going to go build words. They invited schwa to go with them, and schwa finds his place by helping them to be more unstressed as they build multi-syllabic words. So it's a beautiful story about how you work together and you just. There's a takeaway of being an individual, and not always, you know, having to assimilate to the way that others work, but being yourself and really honing in on your strengths, and everyone has something to offer. So, even though schwa was perceived as lazy, schwa really just needed to find his place. And then in the back there's tips and tools like fun facts, word hunts and then teacher tips for after reading the book. Can you share?
Speaker 2:a couple of teacher tips with us.
Speaker 3:Sure. One teacher tip that's really cool is to really talk about stress and un-stressed syllables or emphasize and un-emphasize syllables. So un-emphasize syllables are often said quicker and quieter, and then stress syllables or emphasize syllables are often said louder and longer. So that helps students to understand what we mean when we talk about stress and un-stressed syllables, or emphasize and un-emphasize. Another teacher tip that I like to talk about is, depending on where you're teaching, talk about how dialects can impact schwa, where I am from in New York City. I've grown up saying pecan pie in my entire life. What about you all? How do you all say pecan?
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm always asking myself the same question, Like how do I say that?
Speaker 1:There's a lot of words that I wonder as well. I have no idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah so that might be kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:I think I do say pecan. I think that's what would naturally come out of my mind.
Speaker 1:I think I say pecan as well, only because I thought it sounded fancier than pecan it does.
Speaker 3:It sounds fancier. So that's another job. That schwa has the fanci which one does but it's cool to talk about dialect and how that impacts where schwa is placed or which syllable is emphasized, because I'm emphasizing the first syllable and I'm speaking it as if it's an open syllable and the second one has a vowel, that's the nasalized A versus pecan having a schwa in the first syllable and it's an emphasize, and the second syllable is emphasized and you know. So that could be kind of interesting to talk about. Maybe a little too deep for kids, maybe, you know, we could talk about that as teachers, but that's something to consider when we're teaching definitely so neat.
Speaker 1:I love it. And I just did a caveat and I know we spoke about this before, but a caveat that this doesn't replace explicit systematic phonics instruction. This book is not a replacement, it's just. It's a fun way to explore the not so lazy schwa. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yes, so the purpose of this book is called a phonics read-aloud, so please do not replace your phonics instruction with this Like always adhere to your foundational literacy program and curriculum that is evidence-based and explicit and systematic and diagnostic and all those wonderful things that the research shows us, that works. And if you want to bring this in for extension activities or to model fluent oral reading, to have think-aloud, for tier two and tier three vocabulary, to discuss some of the themes, or even for small groups and centers, that's what this book is for.
Speaker 1:So I'm hoping that you can tell us a little bit about National Schwa Day. How did this day come to be?
Speaker 3:Oh goodness, interesting question. So National Schwa Day it really just came to me as a way for us to celebrate and foster a love of language and literacy in schools. If you look at the National Archives site, there's a national anything you can think of like day, and I'm like why doesn't the schwa have its own day? Schwa is so important, the schwa needs a day. So I petitioned the National Day Archives and had to go back and forth and give a rationale for why schwa deserves its own day. Finally, they sent me this proclamation yes, I have it in a frame by my desk that it's official. It is official, and so I thought this would be a really good way to just really celebrate language and literacy in classrooms.
Speaker 3:There's so much that's changing each day. There's more research that's coming out about what we know as the best practices in language and literacy, and I'm a huge fan of the speech-to-front approach and making this shift from word walls to sound walls. I heard your last episode about sound walls and was like cheering on and a huge advocate of that, but I wanted to make it come to life for students because, let's be real, some of these strategies are tough to understand for kids and if we can do our part in making it just a little bit easier and more enjoyable for kids, then we make the learning experience real. So that was why National Schwade came about. It's just a celebration of what makes our language so cool and so unique and our spoken language, the meaning of words sounding more natural. And it's a reminder to be unstressed too, like the Schwade, like let's relax and be unstressed also. I love that.
Speaker 1:Can you share with us what the exact date is?
Speaker 3:Yes, so the exact date of National Schwade is April 7th of every year, so this is the inaugural year. Well, I wanted a day in the calendar year with a month that has a schwa sound in it. So April has a schwa. And then I wanted the name of the date to have a schwa sound. And what are some other?
Speaker 2:ways that I mean, I don't know. Do you already know of things people are doing to celebrate, or do you have suggestions for people what they can do to celebrate?
Speaker 3:So some people have told me that they are doing a pajama day Pajama because you hear the schwa in there and I think that's pretty cool and low cost and you know people can participate. Hopefully everyone has, you know, pajamas or something they can bring in this loudness. My son loves a pajama day? Oh, I love that, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then so some people are doing pajama days and drinking hot chocolate because you hear the schwa on the last syllable and the second syllable, hot chocolate. Another school is doing a lemonade bar and they're going to add like different flavors and fruits into their lemonade. And then they'll do like word hunt activities. And then a lot of school counselors are pushing into classrooms to do mindfulness activities so they're doing breathing techniques to stay unstressed, like the schwa. So that sounds like a lot of fun. And then, of course, we have our schools in our classrooms that are working with their decodable passages from their foundational literacy curriculum to do word hunts. A gym teacher messaged me this weekend and said that they are going to do like some activities with like above and around and like doing different games that have schwa in them. I was blown away because I didn't think, you know, pe teachers would kind of make the connection to literacy. But that's what this holiday is all about. It's like bridging the connections.
Speaker 1:If I were wanting to celebrate National Schwa Day, about what were some resources you would recommend to me or to our teachers listening?
Speaker 3:Well, let's start with the fact that teachers have to make so many decisions Every day. I remember would come home and just like have this huge cloud in the front of my head like, oh gosh, I think I've made a million decisions today and what I want to do is make national schwa day as easy as possible. So I've taken up a legwork and the thought work and I've made an educator toolkit. So if you go to National schwa day dot org, you can click on a button and there is a toolkit and there's everything on this website that you need to celebrate National schwa day Everything, and when I say everything, I mean everything.
Speaker 3:I've written a letter that you can make a copy of and Google Doc Convincing your principal why you should have National schwa day. Like, hey, heads up, my kids are gonna come in pajamas and I'm gonna take a little bit of instructional time to do this, and here's why there are student headbands for them to color in and Customize. There are letters to send home to parents that provides an overview of what schwa is and then how their students will be participating, their students certificates. And then in the classroom I've got activities for small groups of coloring pages, differentiated activities that they can do in the literacy block or outside of the literacy block, and there's just a lot of activities in there. So if a teacher is listening to this and you have a copy of the book the not so lazy schwa I have a read-a-loud guide that has the tiered vocabulary and discussion props and extension activities.
Speaker 3:But if you don't have a copy of the not so lazy schwa, I want to make sure that this holiday is accessible to everyone. That's important to me, accessibility, and I know teachers spend a lot of money on a pocket anyway. So I've created a read-a-loud of the book that you can show to your students on your board and so you can still engage in the activities and do everything. There's no cost associated and I just really want this to be fun, like I said, and just fall through this level of literacy with your students. So warning your students, may, you know, call out and say that word has a shot. They were has a shot from the days to follow, which is a good thing because it's become real. But this educator toolkit has everything packaged in one place so you can employ national schwa day this year and hopefully years to follow too.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you for putting that all in one place, and even the video that you mentioned is on national schwa day. Yeah, I work as well.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's linked in the toolkit.
Speaker 1:I didn't list it publicly on YouTube, but it's the one I think like page 24 of the document okay, we're gonna link the toolkit in our show notes here and we also will make sure that we share it a whole lot on social media.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, we loved hearing today about the Not so Lazy Shwa and National Shwa Day. Before we leave, do you want to just tell everybody about your other books, your other website, anything else you want people to know about? Sure, sure.
Speaker 3:Before we go, I would just like to thank you all for celebrating and joining in National Shwa Day. This is going to be really fun and if you participate, make sure to use hashtag National Shwa Day on all social media If you want your pictures to be featured on the site. I can be reached at hello at eventmanscom or info at phonicsreadaloudscom. And phonicsreadalouds is the series in which this book comes from. So this is the first book, the Not so Lazy Shwa, and the next book is the very special Heart Word. So this one exercises how we should use mapping techniques over memorization to use different Heart Word strategies for decodable and non-decodable and not yet decodable words too. So this book is on phonicsreadaloudscom. And then the very helpful floss rule. It's got a magical floss that comes to life. It's really fun and by the time you're listening to this the overly controlling bossy R will be out and it's a pirate story that takes the bells captive. So hopefully you can see all those on phonicsreadaloudscom so cool.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for all of these amazing contributions you're making to literacy by lifting up some really important things such as national shwa day, and also some really fun books that we can all hook into to learn more and to just get excited about what we're learning in foundational skills.
Speaker 2:Thanks, so much Joy to this. It's really exciting.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. If you want shwa swag, which is a tongue twister, that's available on phonicsreadalouds also, but I cannot say that more than one time.
Speaker 1:I definitely want shwa swag.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's available on phonicsreadaloudscom. Also, a couple of schools are getting some shirts and stickers for their students, so if you want those, you know those are available. But I just hope that you participate and make this fun for our students who love to learn literacy and hopefully, if they don't love literacy yet, they will very soon.
Speaker 1:That's great Yep National shwa day. Get ready, get set, relax Shwa.
Speaker 3:I love it.
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