When r follows a vowel it changes it. The vowel is no longer short or long — it merges with the r into a single sound, which is why these are called r-controlled or 'bossy r' vowels. There are three to know: ar in 'car', 'farm' and 'shark'; or in 'corn', 'fork' and 'storm'; and the /er/ sound, which is spelled three different ways — er, ir and ur — and appears here as ir in 'bird' and 'girl' and as ur in 'turn', 'hurt' and 'nurse'.
How it is taught
ar and or come first because each has one common spelling and one sound, so they are reliable. The /er/ sound is taught afterwards and taught differently: er, ir and ur sound identical, so no amount of listening tells a child which to write. Teachers usually group the words by spelling — 'bird', 'girl', 'first' together; 'turn', 'hurt', 'nurse', 'burst' together — so the choice is remembered per word rather than reasoned out from the sound.
Where children get stuck
- Children try to sound the vowel and the r separately — /k/ /a/ /r/ for 'car' — which never assembles into the real word.
- The /er/ spellings get swapped constantly: 'burd' or 'berd' for 'bird', 'gerl' for 'girl', 'nerse' for 'nurse'. This is a memory task, not a decoding failure, and is worth telling children so.
- In longer words the r-controlled vowel can hide behind a blend, so 'first', 'burst', 'sharp' and 'chart' are harder than 'car' even though the vowel pattern is the same.
Word list
All 20 words here are single-syllable, so they are read and spelled whole.