As students continue to grow in their decoding skills, they are now ready to read books that include vowel teams—a natural next step in our structured approach to reading. These books come after focused work with CVC words, digraphs, blends, CVCe patterns, and r-controlled vowels, all of which follow the Science of Teaching Reading framework. Why Are We Moving to Vowel Teams? Vowel teams are two vowels working together to make one sound. Sometimes the first vowel says its name (as in boat or rain ), and sometimes the team makes a completely different sound (like cow or book ). These patterns (ai, ay, ee, ea, oa, ow, ou, and more) are common in English and appear in many high-frequency words. Learning to recognize and decode vowel team patterns helps readers tackle longer and more sophisticated words with greater ease and accuracy. Why This Order? Our reading sequence follows a research-based progression that supports mastery through gradual, intentional steps: ✔ CVC Words – Build a strong foundation with simple three-letter words. ✔ Digraphs – Learn letter pairs that make one sound (sh, ch, th, wh, ck). ✔ Initial Blends – Practice smoothly combining sounds at the beginning of words (bl, st, gr). ✔ CVCe Words – Learn how silent e changes a vowel’s sound. ✔ Ending Blends – Add complexity by blending sounds at the ends of words (nd, sk, mp). ✔ R-Controlled Vowels – Recognize and decode vowel sounds affected by the letter r (ar, or, er, ir, ur). ✔ Vowel Teams – Learn how two vowels together can create new and sometimes unexpected sounds (ai, ea, ow, etc.). By teaching vowel teams after r-controlled vowels, we allow students to first master more predictable