Long A vowel teams: ai, ay

General

Students will learn about what a vowel team is and the vowel teams AI and AY that make the long A sound. Then they will practice recognizing and decoding words that use this spelling pattern. They will learn the helpful expression, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking,” in order to remember the sounds the vowel teams make.

Standards

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.3c

Learning objective

Students will be able to recognize each of the long A vowel teams within various words and use what they know about the spelling pattern to decode new words.

Introduction

Students will review silent e words. Just like silent e makes the first vowel long, there is another vowel pattern for long vowels. Introduce the concept of vowel teams.

Instruction

Students will be introduced to the long A vowel teams, ay and ai. They will remember the important phrase: "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." Next, they will explore several words that have these vowel teams. The first word they will look at is "lay." For each word, students will say the long A sound, point to the beginning of the word, read each sound (e.g., l--ay), and blend the sounds together. They will then check that they said the word right with the text-to-speech tool. They will do the same with an ai word, "rain."

They will complete a series of activities identifying words with ay and ai vowel teams. They will match ay and ai words to their pictures. They will also read several sentences and identify the words with a long A vowel team. They will then read words with missing letters and drag the correct vowel teams to complete the words.

Quiz

Students are given ten questions to review long A vowel teams.

Closing

Students will recall the two vowel teams they learned in this lesson and the phrase that helps them remember the vowel teams. They will look at several pictures and spell the words. (They are all words with long A vowel teams.) Lastly, students will play a spin the wheel activity that practices long A vowel teams.

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