Iati And Diphthongs, Exercises For Elementary School Children
Jates and diphthongs are part of the elementary school curriculum. Despite this, it may be useful for parents to have some exercises at hand to make their children work at home and thus facilitate a better learning of these contents.
Knowing the vowels to learn what a hiatus and a diphthong are
To understand what a hiatus is and what a diphthong is, first you need to know that vowels are divided into two categories. On the one hand, there are the closed vowels, which are the “i” and the “u”; on the other hand, we have the open vowels, that is the “a”, the “e” and the “o”.
To recognize whether we are in the presence of a hiatus or a diphthong, we must correctly divide the words into syllables and we must be clear about these characteristics of the vowels.
Iati and diphthongs
A hiatus is the union of two vowels in the same word, but which belong to two distinct syllables, and which are pronounced interrupted in two different syllables. The meeting of two strong vowels is traditionally considered hiatus, with the accent on the first vowel; secondly, the meeting of two strong vowels with the accent on the second is considered hiatus, or the meeting of a strong vowel with a weak one, which is however stressed.
On the other hand, a diphthong is the meeting of two vowels in the same syllable, to be exact a closed vowel and an open vowel. We speak of diphthong, however, even when we find two closed vowels in the same syllable. In turn, diphthongs can be descendants or ascenders.
In descending diphthongs the first vowel is open and the second vowel is closed. We speak of ascending diphthongs, however, when there is the meeting of a first closed vowel and a second open vowel. There are also diphthongs formed by two unstressed closed vowels.
Exercises in hiatuses and diphthongs for elementary school children
Below we share some simple exercises of hiatuses and diphthongs that elementary school children can do both at school and at home.
1. Coloring hiatuses and diphthongs
In a colored cardboard, messy words are written. The children then have to color the words with two different colors, green and red, depending on whether they are hiatuses or diphthongs respectively. Word examples:
- With hiatus: trunk, theater, poet, line.
- With diphthong: diphthong, water, honey, dish.
2. Recognize hiatuses and diphthongs
A variation of the previous exercise is to write the words on a piece of paper, instead of coloring them. In other words, the teacher will pronounce the words aloud, one after the other, and the children, in groups of three, will note on a piece of paper whether it is a word with a hiatus or with a diphthong. Finally, the winning team will be chosen based on the number of words guessed by each group.
Examples of words with hiatus and diphthongs: area, flower, key, country, nail, mine, leopard, man, master.
3. Make up a story
Children can write short stories in which they will have to include sentences that contain, for example, words with hiatus formed by open vowels. For example: Last week I went to the village and visited the museum with my grandparents.
4. 1, 2, 3… looking for diphthongs!
While the children are facing away, we write several words on the board that contain a diphthong, both ascending and descending.
After counting to 3, the children will turn to look at the blackboard and in the previously indicated time frame (20 seconds), they will have to recognize words with descending diphthongs. Immediately after, the exercise will be repeated to find words with ascending diphthongs during the second round.
It is important that the teacher or parent accompanying the children can write down the words they indicate and then make the necessary corrections. Or, in any case, explain well, clearly, both the errors and the correct answers.
5. Guessing accented hiatuses
The children will have to solve riddles having as a suggestion that the correct answer will always be a word formed by a hiatus with an accent either on the first or second vowel. In this way, it is possible to create riddles for words such as aunt, plane, fear, zoo, away, …
Example: (aunt). Riddle: Is my mom’s sister mine …?
