This sound is /k/, as in the word 'car.' This is another stop phoneme, so be careful not to add a vowel sound after it. This is not /kuh/; it’s just /k/. Of course, the letter ‘c’ also has what’s called a minor sound because it can also make the /s/ sound, but we teach that later in the curriculum. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents this phoneme with the following symbol: k. In the early stages of the curriculum, Once’s instructional content represents the sound with a symbol that is made by typing ‘c’ in a specialized font. This specialized orthography helps beginning readers (pre-kindergarten students through early elementary grades) learn letter-sound correspondence more quickly. By the middle stages of the curriculum, the specialized orthography is phased out and replaced by letters in a serif font.

Back to all phonemes