Teaching vowel digraphs explicitly is important so that students understand and recognise that 2 letters can come together to make one sound (phoneme). This allows them to read more fluently and accurately, rather than trying to sound each letter individually. This post will briefly cover the vowel digraph definition, vowel digraph examples, a vowel digraph list and engaging and explicit activities for vowel digraphs. It is best to teach vowel digraphs in an explicit, systematic, cumulative, and sequential way to ensure the most success for students. This post will share ideas and activities on how you can achieve this in the classroom.
VOWEL DIGRAPH DEFINITION
A vowel digraph is a combination of two vowel letters that together represent a single vowel sound. The two vowel letters in a digraph work together to create a sound that is different from the individual sounds of the letters. Vowel digraph examples include “ai” in “rain”, “ee” in “seed”, “oa” in “boat”, “ue” in “blue”, and “ie” in “pie”.
There are 18 vowel sounds in English, but only 5 vowel letters to represent them with. Therefore it is needed to use combinations of the vowel letters. The correct terminology for 2 vowels working together to represent one sound is ‘vowel digraph’. The letters ‘y’, ‘w’, ‘gh’ and ‘r’ are also used in representations of vowel sounds (as in ‘ay’, ‘ow’, ‘igh’ and ‘er’), this is why sometimes the term ‘vowel teams’ is used.
Understanding the sounds produced by vowel digraphs can be challenging since each vowel digraph can have multiple pronunciations, which means that the order of the vowels isn’t always a reliable indicator of the pronunciation of words. This complexity can be especially confusing for students, given the numerous exceptions and irregularities in the English language.
For example, the vowel digraph /ea/ usually produces a long /e/ sound, as in “tea” or “cream,” but it can also produce a short /e/ sound, as in “bread” or “head,” or even a long /a/ sound, as in “break” or “steak.” Therefore, it’s crucial to understand these various sounds and recognize that what we see in written words may not always align with their pronunciation.
In summary:
A digraph is two letters that go together to make one sound (phoneme).
A Vowel digraph is two vowel letters that go together to make one sound, examples are: ‘oa, ai, ie, ea, ee’. Consonant letters ‘y’, ‘w’ and ‘r’ are also used in vowel digraphs, such as ‘ay’, ‘ow’ and ‘er’. Some good examples of vowel digraph words are: sail, seal, rain, goat, boat, feed, meal, flies and tie. As compared to examples of consonant digraphs, which are: ‘th, wh, sh, ck, ch’.
Vowel digraph vs diphthong
Diphthongs are a special kind of vowel sound where the tongue changes position to make the sound of two vowels (often referred to as a gliding vowel). So a digraph is when two letters spell one sound, therefore a diphthong is essentially a vowel digraph too. For example ow is a digraph and a diphthong. The most common diphthongs are: oy/ oi, as in boy and oil and ow/ ou, as in cow and cloud.
Vowel digraph word list
Here is a quick reference word list with vowel digraphs.
Download free here.
Explaining the vowel digraph meaning to students:
When introducing a new vowel digraph in a lesson or as part of your daily warm up or review, before you recite digraphs, you could try and say a little chant to remind the students what a digraph is.
‘Digraphs are 2 letters that come together to make one sound’ (Using hand actions helps too, hold up 2 fingers and then bring them together as you say the chant).
This really helps when students are reading and know that when they see a digraph to read those 2 letters together as a digraph rather than separately. And you can say to them – remember that is a digraph, if they start to sound the letters individually.
5 Strategies to teach vowel digraphs
Using these strategies to introduce vowel digraphs and explicitly teaching gives the students lots of opportunities to apply and practise their new phonics knowledge. I have seen amazing progress in both students and my own children’s reading and writing progress using these strategies.
- When introducing a new vowel digraph, start off with a ‘hook’, something fun and engaging to excite the students and engage them. This could be a ‘sound box’ or mystery bag with objects and pictures with the new sound, a song featuring the focus vowel digraph, reading a book with the focus digraph, have a ‘digraph monster’ (puppet or cardboard cut-out and he only eats things with the focus sound) and feed him the pictures or objects.
2. Use an explicit PowerPoint presentation on the new vowel digraph that has the following elements:
*Example pictures
*Decodable words and sentences to have a go at reading
*Pictures of words to have a go at writing
*Dictation pictures with sentences to write
*Slides to check for understanding; for example: click on the correct picture that starts with the focus vowel digraph, find the vowel digraph, circle the vowel digraph in words, swat the word and I spy pictures
3. Apply and practise the new knowledge later in groups or individually using vowel digraph activities like:
*Reading decodable readers with the focus digraph and write a sentence from the book
*Find and colour the vowel digraph worksheet
*Flip book crafts
*Create a booklet with the focus digraph
4. Review new vowel digraphs regularly in your daily review and/or with flashcards and incorporate into future lessons, dictation and decodable words, books and activities.
5. Play games using the focus vowel digraph like:
*roll the sound
*write the room
*find the sound
*memory
*snap
*bingo
*Fishy fishy
5 TIPS FOR TEACHING VOWEL DIGRAPHS SUMMARY
1. Teach the new vowel digraph explicitly
2. Provide lots of opportunities for students to apply and practice the new sound in a variety of games and activities
3. Use decodable words, sentences and books so that the students have success in reading and writing the new vowel digraph. Using sounds that haven’t been taught yet can be discouraging for students, as they won’t be able to sound the whole word out successfully.
4. Review the new vowel digraph regularly in daily reviews, readers and activities
5. Play games – make it fun
In conclusion, explicitly teaching vowel digraphs is an effective way to help students improve their reading and writing skills. By helping students understand the different sounds of each vowel combination and providing them with rich and engaging practice activities to reinforce those sounds and concepts, you can create a solid foundation for success in reading, writing and spelling.
If you would like to teach vowel digraphs to your students in an explicit and engaging way and see the same success, I have the following freebie that will help you get started:
And you may like to check out my vowel digraph activity PowerPoints here:
Explicit lessons ready to go that are currently available (more coming soon):
Or buy all available digraph ready to teach PowerPoint lessons in a bundle for half price a blog post special here:
