Some of the mountains that our struggling readers must climb are bigger than others. One skill that we must introduce fairly early on, but that will take a long time to master is the vowel team syllable.

In principle, the vowel team syllable is easy to spot and easy to understand. There are two (or more) vowels together that make a sound. However, the reality is that there are many, many vowel teams. Often, a vowel team can make more than one sound AND most sounds have more than one vowel team spelling. These factors make this a tricky and ongoing learning process. If you’ve been searching for appropriate resources for your Orton-Gillingham lesson plans, be sure to check this vowel teams category.

Here are ten teaching tips to keep in mind.

1.    1.   Try not to teach all the vowel teams back to back when following Orton-Gillingham lesson plans or reading intervention programs. Students need an opportunity to practice and solidify their learning. Adding too many vowel teams at once is likely to lead to confusion. Placing lessons on spelling rules or suffixes or even r controlled vowels in between some of the vowel teams is wise.

2.      2. There is no right or wrong order to teach the vowel teams, but I think it is helpful to start with the more common vowel teams and the vowel teams that have a clear spelling generalization. For example ai and ay are both common, and also have a predictable pattern of use. I think ai, ay, ee, oa, ou and oo are good vowel teams to start with. If you notice the progression chart I follow, it has some vowel teams that appear to be listed to teach back to back, but a word of caution. You should be spacing them out by weaving in lessons and skills on the right hand side of the chart. For example, even though it may appear ee and ea look like they are taught back to back, it is not recommended to do so.  I suggest teaching ee. Then hop to the right side to teach some spelling generalizations like k and ck. THEN, when ee is spaced out enough from an ea lesson, do vowel team ea.

3.      3. Teach the less common vowel teams or less common pronunciations later. For example, I typically save oe and ey until after I have taught ea like eat, ow like snow and ow like plow, both sounds of oo, and the accompanying spelling generalizations. Depending on what scope and sequence you follow, this may vary, but some of the less common vowel teams like oi, oy, aw, au, ou like soup and ea like bread or steak, I teach even later on. Read tips for teaching spelling generalizations for more practical ideas. 

4.      4. Be careful of generalizations such as “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking”. This is untrue often enough that it is problematic (ey in they, ie in thief, ou in shout, ow in plow, ea in bread and steak etc.)

5.    5.   It may not be helpful for struggling learners to be able to differentiate between vowel digraphs and diphthongs. The definitions are a bit fuzzy even for adults. For the purposes of reading and writing, I find it most helpful to talk about all of them as vowel teams and talk about the kinds of sounds they make as long sounds, short sounds or something else. For example, it is helpful for a child to know that oi says /oy/ as in boil and that this sound is neither long nor short. However, the finer points of how it glides from one vowel to another to make that sound is most likely not necessary unless there is an articulation issue. Additionally, vowel teams can be 2, 3 or even 4 letters, so using the term digraph is not always going to be most accurate.

6.      6. For the purposes of reading and writing, y and w act as parts of the vowel team, not as consonants.

7.      7. Be transparent with students about frequency of use and some of the tricky parts of spelling or pronunciation choices. Sometimes you need to try both pronunciations to know which one is correct and sometimes you can’t be sure which spelling choice is correct, but if you know the relative frequency, you can make an educated guess. Develop a system for working on spelling options whether it is a running list of words that the student knows, a picture story or drawing connections between the words. In “Visualizing Spelling Choices”, you’ll find practical ideas for helping children make appropriate grapheme choices. I think you’ll love the frequency graphs!

8.     8. Along with teaching about spelling choices as you go, introducing homophones during your instruction on vowel teams is a good idea. They come up more and more frequently at this point and working to gradually build an aptitude with them is helpful. I have students create a growing homophone picture dictionary in the back of their Orton-Gillingham notebooks. Having the visual really help spelling to stick and reinforces the importance meaning rather than memorization.

9.      9. Build abundant vowel team practice into What says? and SOS.  I try to have students write the known spellings for all the long vowels during each lesson. I use a consistent key word to spark their memory. There are also many helpful mnemonics to help with remembering the many spelling options such as the many sounds of long e. Sometimes it is most helpful and memorable to have the child make up their own silly image or sentence.

10.  Ultimately, we want students to view vowel teams as a unit. We can help foster this by having students mark the vowel teams, trace the entire vowel team as a unit, color coding the vowels, using letter tiles or magnets that lump together the letters as a unit, using building blocks or unifix cubes that lump vowel teams together.

The vowel team mountain can seem overwhelming when students are first starting out, but with lots of practice and support, students will be rattling off the many spellings for long e in no time. The effort is worthwhile because the view from the top is fabulous.

For more teaching tips, please refer to part four in my syllable series on teaching vowel teams. 

For links to all of my vowel team resources, go to the Vowel Teams category in my TpT store.

You may also be interested in more in-depth vowel team syllable type practice. Grab your syllable freebie here. 

I’d love to share a tool that will cut some of that lesson planning time down for you.

Sign up for a 21-day FREE trial of Word List Builder. Simply create an account, login and you’re on your way!

Thank you for stopping by my blog today. 🙂

Calling all Orton-Gillingham tutors and therapists! I have a directory of qualified educators on my site for parents to search. Join or search when you click on “Word List Builder” at the top. When you are there, click on   “Find A Tutor” or go HERE. You may register to enter your contact information in the directory for only $10 a year. Families may search the directory for free!

A HUGE thank you for your continued support of me, my store and my website! It is greatly appreciated!