Mouth barely open. Lips spread. Tongue high and forward, but relaxed — /i/, as in 'sit'.
Check yourself: Say 'bed' then 'bid': the jaw comes up again, and it is the smallest opening of the three.
Watch for: The long ee of 'seat'. Arabic and Somali have the long one, not this short relaxed one, so 'sit' comes out as 'seat'.
◆ marks a word that does NOT follow today's pattern — Blumenfeld boxes these on the page. Teach it by heart; do not let the class sound it out and lose faith in the rule.
Say the word, have them repeat it, count the sounds on fingers, THEN write. The count is what stops a child writing the first letter and guessing the rest.