There is a sense in which this is just your basic, run of the mill long-a sound. It's true! But I like to teach this as a blend so that students see

We know the word or and the words, such as Lord that follow this same rule. But the or blend can make another sound as well: it can sound like er

There are very few words in the English language in which the blend wh makes the h sound, and we might as well face those facts with this book. All

At our house, we call this the o-something-e rule. Yep. That's its official name. That might not be as fancy as what other people call it,

This is another one of those rules that doesn't come into play very often. As a reading teacher, it is sometimes really tempting to skip these