This sound is /j/, as in the word 'jump.' Technically, this is another affricate, like /h/, but we’ll treat it as a stop phoneme, so be careful not to add a vowel sound after it. This is not /juh/; it’s just /j/. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents this phoneme with the following symbol: dʒ. In the early stages of the curriculum, Once’s instructional content represents the sound with a symbol that is made by typing ‘j’ 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.

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