Vowel Team Syllables

Vowel team syllables are sometimes called CVVC syllables. Vowel teams are syllables where two vowels work together to make a single sound.

• Sometimes the vowels form a long vowel sound e.g. team, boat, sail
• Sometimes the vowels form a diphthong sound e.g. soil, cow
• Vowel teams can be two, three or four letters
  • ai, ee, oa
  • igh
  • aigh, ough

These syllables are common in longer words, and there are several different vowel team combinations.

When to teach?

Because there are so many different vowel teams (all the long vowels & diphthongs), it’s best to save vowel team syllables to be one of the last syllable types that you teach. Students should already be familiar with open, closed, final e, and r-controlled syllable types.

Ensure students have already been exposed to the vowel teams in previous phonics lessons. Students should already be confident with recognising and reading vowel teams in one-syllable words. Even if your students can read short vowel team words, they may struggle to read longer vowel team words.

Teaching Tips

• Use lots of visuals e.g. colour coding with the same colour for both vowels in a vowel team.
• In vowel teams, y and w act as vowels and not consonants. 
• Avoid the phrase “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking” – this is only true around 50% of the time.
• Start with common vowel teams – e.g. ai, ay, ee, ea
  • Example Word: teacup
    • First, look for the vowels in the word.
    • Right away we can see there are three vowels in this word, not just two. We need to ask – is there a vowel team in this word? Two vowels side by side that work as a team?
    • The answer is yes - we have ‘ea’ to make the long ee sound.
    • You can choose to mark it with a scoop or a VT – it doesn’t matter, just keep it consistent.

• Next, break apart words with less common vowel teams e.g. argue

• Then work on words with diphthong vowel teams e.g. poison

• Treat the vowel team like a SINGLE vowel when dividing the word into 2 syllables.