Start with your mouth half open and your lips wide, like a small smile. Then slide your tongue UP and close your mouth a little as you finish. Two sounds glued together — /eɪ/, which is the name of the letter a.
Check yourself: Hand under your chin. Say it slowly: your jaw comes UP at the end. If your jaw never moves, you are saying one sound where there should be two.
Watch for: A flat 'eh' with no slide. Arabic, Somali and Urdu all have a plain long e, so the vowel sounds close but stops halfway and 'made' comes out near 'med'. The slide is not decoration; it is the sound.
◆ 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.