word study. This question this week was based  around a few words that I have gotten recently  

and I saw a pattern and that's why I'm  teaching the pattern this way. Typically,  

when we have a closed syllable in english,  meaning it ends with one or two consonant sounds,  

that vowel before it is going to be short.  Many of my students think this should be oh  

or oh. But in this case this is a spelling  exception and a reading exception. We're going to  

say the long o and you were going to say old and  olt. How do we do this? You're going to start with  

that o. Your mouth is going to be open, tongue  is going to be low in the bottom of the mouth,  

then you're going to move to a pucker. As you  move to a pucker, your tongue doesn't really  

have anywhere else to go so, it's just going  to be flat in the middle of your mouth. o o o.

Then you're going to keep moving your  tongue from the middle of your mouth  

to the back of your top front teeth for that L. As  you do this, you want to think about smiling lips  

so that your lips are no longer in a pucker.  Okay so it's going to look like this old old old.

It looks kind of funny because I'm going  really really slowly. It won't look so  

funny when I try it in a word. And then we're  going to end with that d d. And to do that:  

tip of the tongue touches the back of your top  front teeth, air puffs out, voice box is on and  

moving. For the t, same position, voice box  is off, and is not moving. So let's try those 

old old old olt olt olt 

told gold 

hold cold 

bolt jolt 

colt volt

One more thing someone asked me about,  what's the difference between cold and gold? 

Gold: voice box is on and moving. Cold: voice box is not on and not vibrating.

One more time: 

told gold 

hold cold 

bolt jolt 

colt volt

So give me a sentence with any of those words  and give it a try. I know people are going  

to notice the difference. If you found  this helpful give us a like and a share.  

If you need help we have products and classes  listed at Tarle Speech. Thanks everyone!