The aw vowel team

All phonics patterns › The aw vowel team

What 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 aw 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.

• claw
• crawl
• dawn
• draw
• hawk
• paw
• saw
• straw
• yawn

Free decodable book: Decodable Vowel Team AW

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.

How to teach it

1. Say the sound on its own first, several times, before showing any letters.
2. Show the spelling and name it explicitly — tell the reader what it says rather than asking them to work it out.
3. Blend two or three words from the list together, out loud, slowly.
4. Read the decodable book above, where the pattern repeats in real sentences.
5. Come back to it two or three days later. Cumulative review is what makes it stick.

Lessons that practise this pattern

• aw vowel team

  Read aw as /aw/ at the end of words or before n/l

• Word sort: au vs aw

  Sort words that say /aw/ by their spelling pattern

Related vowel team patterns

• The air vowel team
• The al vowel team
• The all vowel team
• The au vowel team
• The ea vowel team
• The ear vowel team (as in bear)
• The ear vowel team (as in near)
• The ee vowel team

Practise this in Lumira