LumiraWhat is a vowel team?
In a vowel team, two or more letters combine to spell one vowel sound. English has many of them and several spell more than one sound, so each team needs explicit teaching and plenty of practice in real words.
The au vowel team — word list
Every word below appears in the decodable book on this page, so a reader who practises the list will meet the same words again in context.
- author
- autumn
- haunt
- launch
- pause
- sauce
Free decodable book: Decodable Vowel Team AU
This is an original Lumira decodable reader, written so that a child can sound out nearly every word using patterns they have already been taught. The full text is below — read it here, or open it in the app to read it together with the words highlighting as you speak.
Mia had sauce. Leo had sauce too. Mia and Leo like sauce.
Leo did pause. Mia did pause too. Mia and Leo did pause and pause.
Mia and Leo did a launch. The launch was fun.
Leo is an author. Mia is an author too. Mia and Leo like autumn.
An old house can haunt you. Mia and Leo did not like it.
Haunt sauce pause launch autumn author. Mia and Leo like them all.
How to teach it
- Say the sound on its own first, several times, before showing any letters.
- Show the spelling and name it explicitly — tell the reader what it says rather than asking them to work it out.
- Blend two or three words from the list together, out loud, slowly.
- Read the decodable book above, where the pattern repeats in real sentences.
- Come back to it two or three days later. Cumulative review is what makes it stick.
Lessons that practise this pattern
au vowel team
Read au as /aw/ in the middle of words
Word sort: au vs aw
Sort words that say /aw/ by their spelling pattern