Phonics: Write Task

Resources/activities that can be used to introduce students to the concept of vowel digraphs:

1. The Vowel Team Clip Card Game can be used as center/station activity for individual students. This activity can be used as students are familiarizing themselves/learning the vowel teams/vowel digraphs, their spellings, and the sounds they make. Students will go card by card, looking at the image provided. They will attach a clothespin to the correct vowel team that fills in the missing letters of the word.

Idea from: https://thisreadingmama.com/vowel-team-clip-cards/

2. Go Fishing For Digraphs! This game follows the same rules as the standard card game “Go Fish”. Students will be paired in partners to play this game, where they will match words with the same spelling and sounding vowel digraphs. They will ask their partner, for example “Do you have a card that has an /ā/ sound and is spelled with ‘ai’?” The players will ask similar questions in order to make matches with the cards in their hands.

Idea from: https://www.fcrr.org/studentactivities/p_018b.pdf

3. Vowel Digraph Beach Ball Toss

Vowel digraph examples will be written all over a beach ball. During our morning meeting, the students will sit in a circle. I will begin by tossing the beach ball to one student. For whichever vowel digraph the student’s hand lands on when they catch the ball, the student will have to say a word that has that vowel digraph in it’s spelling. For example, if the student’s hand it touching the vowel digraph “ea”, they can say the word leash, bead, or dream. The ball will be passed around the circle so all students get a turn.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksH1s-_qew0

I found this video that demonstrates a lesson on how to teach vowel digraphs. Students completed a word sort activity after the direct instruction to practice sorting their words into the correct categories based on the vowel teams they were learning.

5. Vowel Digraph/Team Bingo

For this activity, each student will be given a bingo card with words that contain the vowel digraphs ea, ee, ai, ow, oa, and ay. I will call out a vowel team and the students will need to search for a word on the bingo card that matches the vowel team given. As students become more familiar with vowel digraphs, I will allow them to create their own bingo cards with words they know have the vowel digraphs within them.