Vowel Teams

Since we are celebrating Valentine's Day this week in the classroom I decided to incorporate it into my phonics lesson on vowel teams. I got the idea from this blog, which I have linked to before, she is awesome! Smitten with First. I started with a read aloud of The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond. During my read aloud I made an anchor chart of all the -ai and -ay vowel teams we heard. My students would raise their hand when they heard one and we would record it. They were so excited to hear two in the title right away! I created the umbrella and stick myself, I just drew it on paper and made copies, and I made the hearts on Paint. My students did it in groups of 3 and they had a blast! They each got to record two words on the heart, one -ai and one -ay. They turned out awesome and we hung them on the ceiling all around the room! The next day they were doing an activity about -ai and -ay vowel teams again and they even looked to our umbrellas for help!