Vowel Teams

- When 2 vowels come together to o Silent “e”

make one new sound, e.g. oi  oil  a_e (cake, cap/cape)
o Sometimes it’s a vowel and  e_e (here, her/here)
consonants, e.g. ow  snow  i_e (kite)
or igh  sigh  o_e (bone)
- Some make just one sound, some  u_e (mule/rule, oo)
make more than one. (e.g. ow as in o Don’t teach too soon after
snow, ow as in plow) short vowels
- Alternate terms: vowel digraphs, - Multiple sound vowel teams
complex code. o “Eating bread is great!”
- Single sound vowel teams: o “ea” makes ee, e, or ai
o ee  teeth sounds.
o ai  snail  ea1 (ee), ea2 (e), ea3
 Never at the end (ai)
o ay  play  ea1 70% of
 First choice for the words, ea2
end sound about 25%,
o aw  paw ea3 about 5%
o au  August  Teach one by one, not
o oa  boat all together
o igh  light o oo
o oi  oil  Like moon, oo1 65%
o oy  boy  Like book, oo2 35%
o ew  grew o ow
o oe  toe  Like plow 50%
 Like snow 50%
o ui  fruit
o ou
o ue  blue
 Like ouch 80%
- R-Controlled vowels
 Like touch 10%
o er  her (rooster)
 Like soup 10%
o ir  bird (rooster)
o ie
o ur  hurt (rooster)
 Like piece 50%
o or  for  Like pie 50%
o ar  car o ey
- Silent “e”  Like key or they
o Space for one consonant – no o ei
other letter(s) can go there  Like ceiling or vein
o Difficult vowel team to learn
to “see,” since you need to
“skip over” the consonant to
see the silent “e”
 “Ws boss around some of the vowels so they
don’t say what they usually do.” Bossy W is
the source of many irregular words, and
- 3 sounds Y makes as a vowel especially likes to “boss around” /a/ sounds.
o When “y” is the first letter,
- Example:
it’s a consonant and makes o Wa /wo/
the “yuh” sound like yellow
 Want, water, wand,
o _y
swamp
 “y” at the end of a o “qu” words as well. “qua”
one-syllable word
becomes /kwo/
 /igh/ like cry
 Quality, squander,
o ___ y
quantity
 “y” at the end of a o Two R-controlled vowels
multisyllabic word
too:
 /ee/ like happy
 Wor /wer/
 Frequently a suffix,
 Worry, world
e.g. tip/tippy
 War /wor/
o _y_
 War, warn
 In the middle of a  Quar /kwor/
short word  Quarter,
 Means it is Greek quarantine
based
 Makes /i/ sound like C(eiy)
gym
- C is usually a /k/ sound
Units o Cat, cut, attic
- C becomes /s/ when followed by
We teach “units” like word families because
letters e, i, or y.
they are largely not phonetic, meaning you
o Cell, city, cycle, fence, circle
can’t sound them out easily.
G(eiy)
- all like ball
- old like cold - G usually hard sound
- ind like kind o Gum, gut, gust
- ild like child - Usually becomes /j/ sound when
- ing like sing followed by letters e, i, or y
- ang like bang o Gem, ginger, gym, large
- ong like gong
- ung like hung Open and Closed Syllables
- ink like sink - One vowel followed by consonant(s)
- ank like bank makes a closed syllable
- onk like honk o Met, cat, kit
- unk like sunk - When no consonant follows, makes
Bossy W an open syllable
 o Me, so, etc.

Teaching Consonant Blends

There are over 40 consonant blends in
English!
- Beginning blends
o Spot, stay, squish, grow,
frog, clap, blog, twin
o Shrill, thrill
o Splash, spring, scram, street
- End blends
o Melt, silk, held, last, ask,
and, ant, lift, jump
o Lunch, depth
- Blends at both ends
o Stand, swept, strict
- Why are blends difficult to read?
o Because blends introduce
more sounds that kids have to
remember.
- Use sequential blending by hiding
the last sound, as they likely have
been reliably blending 3 sound
words.
Sight v. Irregular v. High-Frequency Words
- Sight words are words that are read
automatically
o Often used synonymously
with “irregular” words, but
this should be avoided.
- High-frequency words are found
frequently in text
- Irregular words are words that cannot
be explained by the rules of
pronunciation that you know.
- Regular words can be decoded by
known pronunciation rules.