5 Fun Ways to Teach the Vowel Combinations or Vowel Teams

Making lessons fun and associating difficult lessons with pleasantries and turn a discouraged student into an eager participant.  I love to integrate games into my lessons and here is a favorite.

1) Place the vowel combinations on a balloon with a permanent marker, or have the students do it themselves. Pass the balloon from student to student. They will then say the first vowel combination they see and then they share the sound that it makes. In a more advanced version, they can share a word that uses that vowel combination.

2) If you are looking for something more durable than a balloon, you can purchase playground balls and write the vowel combinations on them.

3) Use old scrabble tiles. Place two tiles together to make a vowel combination and then let the students come up with as many words as they can by adding additional tiles. Write all the words down that are created into a list for all the students to see. For added fun, they can add up all the numbers on the tiles to gain points.

4) If you don’t have scrabble tiles, you can purchase small kitchen or bathroom tiles and write the letters on them with permanent markers. If you get the small, rectangular tiles, they can fit both vowel team letters on one tile.

5) Give the students a newspaper or magazine article and a highlighter. Have them highlight all the vowel combinations they can find. Then have them write all the words and as a group read the words aloud and discuss what sound the vowel combination makes in each word.