Vowels
Vowel teams
A vowel team is two vowels working together for one sound, as in “rain”, “boat”, “seed” and “pie”. They are the point where sounding out stops being reliable on its own, because the same team can say more than one thing: ea is different in “eat”, “bread” and “break”.
Teach the most common sound first and hold the alternatives back. A reader who has three possible sounds for ea before they are fluent with one will guess rather than decode.
Patterns and example words
Every word below is from the word list Cody generates from, not a hand-picked sample. The count is how many words in that list carry the pattern.
ai
1,781 wordssaid again paid against train trained training trains
ay
1,282 wordssay saying sayings way ways day days may
ea as in eat
1,531 wordsmean meaning means leave leaves leaving each reads
ee
2,358 wordsbeen see seeing seen sees need needed needing
oa
640 wordsapproach approached approaches approaching road roads board boarded
oe
589 wordsgoes radioed heroes undergoes potatoes doe foe toe
ie as in thief
2,733 wordscompanies countries families studied studies believe believed believes
igh
437 wordsright high higher highest highs might night nights
1 syllable vowel team
4,571 wordsbeen you their they our does said say
Curricula that teach this
Cody generates material against the scope and sequence you already teach. This skill appears in Cody Curriculum, Custom Pattern Selection, UFLI Inspired, Wilson Reading System.
Make a decodable story for this skill
Cody generates stories, word lists and worksheets constrained to the patterns a student has already been taught, so practice on vowel teams does not smuggle in something they have not met yet.