Practicing Vowels

Hi everyone! Today I’m doing a post all about practicing vowels. It’s so important to help our beginning readers master those first short vowel sounds before adding in all the other phonics rules.

Visual Aids

The first thing I want to recommend is using a visual anchor for the sound-symbol relationships.

You can find this free bookmark visual aid for vowel sounds HERE.

I have my students sing a little jingle to help them remember. They tap their first two fingers while they sing it. Each syllable is a tap.

“Apple, apple, /a/, /a/, /a/”
“Eddie, Eddie, /e/, /e/, /e/” (I tell them Eddie is the elephant)
“Igloo, igloo, /i/, /i/, /i/.
“Otter, otter, /o/, /o/, /o/
“Upstairs, upstairs, /u/, /u/, /u/

We sing our vowel jingle for each vowel every day. Then if a student reads a word using the wrong vowel song, then I have them point to the correct sound on the vowel bookmark. For example, if the word is pen and they say pin, I would have them point to e and sing, “Eddie, Eddie, /e/ /e/ /e/ then read the word again. (Eddie is the name of our elephant.)

Activities for Practicing Vowels

An activity I like to play is called “Fill a Word”. You can do this with short vowels, vowel teams, diphthongs or bossy r.

Write several words on chart paper or in a pocket chart.
Leave out the letter(s) that makes the vowel sound.
Use something like sticky notes, popsicle sticks, or math counters to fill in the vowel sounds.
Read the words by filling in different vowels and see how the word changes.

I love having meaningful activities that are quick and simple! You can use it anytime AND it’s a great informal assessment.

You could use this in two ways:

This can be an automaticity activity. Move the vowel from word to word, reading the words as you go. Then, switch out the vowel and repeat.
You can also go one word at a time. Ask students which vowels make a real word when inserted into the word. Look at the example below. Students can say <a> to make “hat”, <i> to make “hit”, <o> to make “hot”, and <u> to make “hut”. Have your students write the words that they can make on their white board or papers, then share with the group.

In this picture we are working on a vowel pair. I have little popsicle sticks with all the vowels. Sometimes I’ll have a student come up and read a word with three different vowel sticks. This is a great whole class lesson.

I like to switch it up based on the season. For some reason, this little change always gets kids excited!

I use apples, ghosts, and pumpkin in the fall. In the winter, I use a gingerbread man and a snowflake. In February I use heart and a groundhog. You get the point!

I also like to do this activity with sentences, too. It can be a real challenge!

I created a digital version of my fall-themed “Fill a Word” activity. You can find it here.

Resources for Practicing Vowels

This is one of my favorite ways to practice and review vowels. This is simple to prep for, which is always nice!

Here’s a little video to show how it works:

I give each student a vowel on a math counter.
They all have the same worksheet with the vowel missing.
They read each word with the vowel they have.
Then, they switch to use another vowel.

Simple, quick, fun. It’s great practice for them and a quick snapshot assessment for me.

If you would like 50 pages of these “Fill a Word sheets to use throughout the year, check this out in my store. It has been updated with Google Slides and preloaded to Seesaw.