3 Must-Do Ways to Teach Vowel Teams
Are vowel teams making you scream?
Then you’re in luck! Buckle in for three fun, easy, and engaging ways to teach and practice vowel teams!
Vowel Team Desert Island
My students absolutely BEG to play this game! It is perfect for those random extra minutes you have throughout the day. It takes absolutely ZERO prep and the only materials required are your whiteboard and marker!
For this example, let’s say the vowel team I have chosen is “ai”. I would say “I am going on a desert island and I am bringing “paint” with me. Who wants to come?” I then write the word “paint” on the board. Then I call on a student who has their hand raised and ask them what they are bringing with them. If they guess a word that fits my rule, I will tell them they can come and I will write their word on the board. If they say a word that does not fit my rule, I shout “YOU CAN’T COME!”. The students always find this hilarious.
If no student guesses an “ai” word, I might eventually add another one onto the board myself.
Color by Vowel Team
This is a absolute crowd-pleaser in my classroom. Have you ever met a student that didn’t love color by number? Well, how about color by vowel team? Students can practice their fine motor skills and vowel teams at the same time.
When we are learning and practicing vowel teams, I like to give my students these coloring sheets to practice recognizing all of the vowel teams we have learned so far.
As a teacher of Orton Gillingham, I also like to have students practice discerning between vowel team syllables and the other syllable types that have been previously taught. Because of this, I have created ten color by code pages. Five of these pages list only the vowel teams, and the other five have students discerning between syllable types.
This pack has 10 different pages for practice vowel teams and syllable types. Each page has a different hand-drawn character that your students will love coloring! Grab this pack of 10 by clicking the button below!
Vowel Team Boggle
We are 3/3 for low-prep, but amazingly engaging vowel team games! My class LOVES phonics boggle! All you need for this game is whiteboards and markers, or if you prefer, paper and pencil!
For this game I usually open a slideshow and create a grid and add letters. However, you can also just draw a grid on a piece of paper. I display the grid and split my class into two teams. I give them three minutes to wrote as many words as they can on their whiteboards.
Once the three minutes are up, the teams take turns telling me one word they found. I write the word they found on the board. We keep going until all the words they found have been added to the board. Lastly, we count up how many words each team found. They cannot repeat words!
Here is an example of a boggle board I make on Google Slides. Would you be interested in a bundle of phonics boggle slides? It may be coming soon in the future! :)
We hope you found these ideas helpful!
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