Vowel Team

When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking” is a rule used to teach that when there are two vowels in a word the first one has the “long” sound of the vowel (or alphabet name), and the second one is not pronounced or silent.

For example, in train we have two vowels a and i.
The “a” has the “long a” sound and “i” is silent. The same happens for each, die, goat, and rescue.

This rule give students additional practice in decoding words that comply with the rule – when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.
Here are few more examples that follow this rule:

ai: rain, mail, nail, grain, train, paint, rail, snail.
ay: day, ray, way, clay, pray, play, stay, tray.
ee: see, tree, peel, sweet, sweep, queen, sheep, jeep.
ea: sea, tea, bead, peach, beach, meat, beans, teacher.
ey: valley, kidney, hockey, honey, turkey, storey, money, donkey.
ie: die, pie, tie, fried, flies, cried, tied, dried.
oa: coal, foam, goal, coat, soap, goat, throat, toast.
ue: venue, issue, queue, pursue, value, statue, argue, tissue.
oe: toe, woe, goes, aloe, Joe.
ui: fruit, suit, cruise, bruise, swimsuit.

When you observe that students have difficulty decoding words with these vowel teams, pull out these charts for further practice and reinforcement. – The vowel team letters are printed in red to further reinforce the rule.

You can print out this word chart to display in your classroom/home and help your students/kids read them. Just click on the poster and save the pdf to your device.

Objectives of teaching this rule:
Students will able to recognize and pronounce pairs of vowels that follow the c-v-v-c rule where the first vowel is a long vowel and the second vowel is a silent vowel.
Students will be able to read and spell simple long vowel words with c-v-v-c spelling patterns.