(upbeat music) Hey, Cheddar, what's going on?

Hi, Mrs. House.

I'm having a hard time reading this letter from Frisbee.

Oh, I know he was going to go away to summer camp, and he was going to ask you to be his pen pal.

He's been writing you letters, hasn't he?

Yes.

I love Frisbee.

Oh, I love Frisbee, too.

He's one of my best friends.

And I understand sometimes it can be really frustrating when you struggle reading something.

Maybe you can read the letter to me and I can figure out how I can help you best.

Let's give it a try.

Dear Cheddar, I got your letter yesterday.

Thank you for being me, me, my pen pal while I'm away at camp.

My favorite part of summer camp so fair has been going fishing with my new friends.

I also like when we sit around the camp camp fear?

and sing songs.

I hope you are having fun this summer too.

Please write back soon.

Your friend Frisbee.

Randi: Okay.

So I can tell there are some words that you really need help reading.

So I'm going to take a look at those words and see if I can help you decode those words.

Cheddar: Thank you so much.

So whenever you get stuck on a word, we're going to look at the parts of the words you know and make the sounds each letter makes.

Sometimes words can be really tricky.

Like this word.

The first one that cheddar got stuck on.

She read it as thank you for being mia pen pal.

Now, we know that didn't sound quite right.

So this word right here is very difficult because some of the letters in that word are playing a trick on us.

I call these words heart words.

And heart words are words that have a letter or letters that don't make the expected sound.

And you have to know that part by heart, like in this word.

That letter Y is actually making a long I sound.

He's being sneaky on us.

It's playing a trick.

We just have to know that part by heart.

So we read this word.

Muh Eye.

My.

I'm going to read that sentence back and see if it makes more sense.

Thank you for being my pen pal while I am away at camp.

Does that make more sense, Cheddar?

That makes so much more sense.

My.

Randi: Good.

Now the next word you got stuck on was this one.

You said my favorite part of summer camp so fair.

We both know that didn't sound quite right and that's how you were getting frustrated.

Cheddar: Oh, yeah.

This word has a bossy R in it.

And if we tried to sound it out with its expected sounds, this is what you would hear, ff, a, er.

Fair.

And we know that doesn't sound right.

Well, that bossy R makes that that A make a different sound.

So it's going to make one of my favorite sounds in the world.

And it is called the Pirate Sound.

It's going to say ff, arg.

Can you try that?

Cheddar: Arg.

Oh, I love that pirate sound.

This word is going to be ff, ar.

Far.

My favorite part of summer camp so far has been going fishing with my new friends.

Cheddar: Far, far.

That sounds like so much fun, doesn't it?

Oh, my goodness.

I wish I was there.

Me, too.

Okay.

We've got another word that you struggled on here.

It says I also like when we sit around the you said camp fir, we weren't really sure what that word was.

It's a really long word.

It's actually a compound word that has two separate words that have put together to make a whole new word.

Let's start by breaking it into it's two separate words.

This is our first word and this is our second word.

And we're going to break them apart and make their sounds k, a, m, puh.

Camp.

Now, we don't really say it like camp because that M is actually a nasal sound and a nasal sound next to a vowel makes the vowel sound a little bit funny.

So we're going to say this one, kuh, amp.

So the first part is camp.

Cheddar: Camp.

And you did pretty good on that part.

The second part has a vowel consonant E. And any time we see that, that's a magic E word and that magic E makes the vowel say it's long sound, and the E does not say a sound at all.

So this part is going to be ff, i, er.

Fire.

Fire.

Randi: So let's put those together.

Camp.

Cheddar: Camp.

Randi: Fire.

Cheddar: Fire.

Randi: Campfire.

Cheddar: Campfire.

That does sound like so much fun.

We have one more to go.

Cheddar: Okay.

This one also has a vowel consonant E so it's that magic E. That magic E is going to make that O say it's long sound, so let's say it together.

Huh, oh, puh.

Hope.

Huh, oh, puh.

Randi: Excellent.

I hope you're having fun this summer too.

Write back soon.

I'm so glad we got those figured out.

And I better let you get back to writing your letter to Frisbee because he's going to be waiting on it and so excited to hear from you.

I hope he likes it.

All right, guys, thanks for helping us out.

And you better get to writing.

Thank you, Mrs. House.

(upbeat music)