First graders recently started learning about vowel teams for our weekly spelling patterns. A vowel team is when two vowels are side by side and make one sound. They are like digraphs, but for vowels! Examples of these are EA, OA, EE, AY, and AI. In each of these pairs, you can hear only one vowel sound. Typically, this is the first vowel. We remember this with the rhyme “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking!”
This week, we are focusing on the vowel team OA. OA is a predictable vowel team, meaning it always says the same sound: a long O. (Our vowel team last week was EA. It was unpredictable because EA could say a long E such as in “sneaky” or a short E such as in “bread”.)
