Why You Need A Vowel Valley In Your Classroom
Have you ever wondered if you need a vowel valley in your elementary classroom? Well, the answer is YES! And, you’ve come to the right place!
I’m so glad you are here teacher friend! Looking into ways to make your classroom more accessible for your young readers makes my heart so happy!
In this post, we will go over the what, why, and how of using a vowel valley in your classroom. This is one bulletin board trend that you should definitely be jumping in on!
These Vowel Valley Sound Wall posters are the perfect addition to your teaching space. These posters provide an excellent visual for students on what makes a vowel a vowel!
A vowel bulletin board can help your students become more independent when decoding new words and also during their independent writing time.
What is a Vowel Valley?
The vowel valley is a visual representation of vowel sounds. Speech production is complex, and although speech and reading are related, they are not equal. The vowel wall allows students to see the shape of each vowel associated with a specific vowel sound.
Together the tongue, jaw, and lips create the shape of the vocal track, which creates vowel sounds. We can classify vowels by identifying the position of the tongue, (front, mid, or back/ high or low) and the lips (rounded or unrounded).
The top left of the vowel valley starts with the vowels that occur with the tongue in the front of the mouth and lips in a smiley position. As the valley dips to the middle the tongue is low and the lips open. From the middle up to the right side, the tongue is further back in the mouth and the lips are more rounded.
Why do you need a vowel valley?
This visual representation of the way vowels are shaped will greatly help your students with their reading and spelling.
As a teacher, you want to make sure that the classroom decor you have adds value to your room. A vowel valley is not just another bulletin board trend, it is a handy tool for your students that looks good too!
Students need information presented in multiple ways, especially those who are struggling with learning to read. By having a vowel bulletin board in your classroom you are providing them with a clear visual of the vowel sounds.
Vowel sounds can be difficult to distinguish for many children and we know that one of the keys to decoding is producing the correct vowel sound for a word. It is so important to model for students how a vowel sounds and the shape your mouth makes when making that sound.
I give my students a mirror when practicing vowel sounds so that they can see the shape their mouth makes. I also make sure that students hold the vowel sound for an extended amount of time to make sure that they are saying it correctly.
How to use a vowel valley in your classroom
Decodable readers
Your young readers need a strategic approach to reading new phonics patterns. My favorite way to do this is with decodable text. The decodable text focuses on one phonic pattern and a few sight words.
During my small group, I use a lesson plan that teaches the sight words students will see in the decodable text. The next step is to teach the phonics pattern in isolation. Then the students practice reading the phonics skill at the word level. Once they have practiced the sight words and the phonic words students are ready to read the decodable text.
My students love to read decodable text because it makes them feel confident. They know the phonics pattern will appear in the story and they can read the words smoothly in connected text because they have practiced them.
Once we have learned the new vowel pattern we look to the vowel valley to see where we can add our new pattern. My kids love to come up with words that fit the newly learned pattern. I have them write a word on a sentence strip and hang it on the wall.
To make the vowel valley more interactive you could add velcro to the sentence strip words so that students could take them off when writing around the room.
Independent reading
This is also a great tool for your students to use when they are doing their independent reading.
That’s what makes a vowel valley so cool! Your students will use it as a tool to sound out words.
They may use it to sound out vowel patterns you have already taught, or they may use it to sound out new words using the vowel mouth shapes as a guide!
Check out how I run my literacy centers! Your students will be begging you for literacy center time!
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Writing Centers
Your students will also start using the vowel bulletin board as a guide for spelling, especially during their independent literacy centers. The goal for the vowel valley is for your students to use it as a guide for decoding and encoding. Your vowel valley will be a great addition to your classroom!
Another great way for students to access the classroom vowel valley is to create a literacy notebook. Within the notebook, students add the different vowel phonics patterns. The tabs that I use in my student notebooks are; vowels, consonants, spelling, syllables, and morphology(affixes).
These notebooks are easy for students to use and allow them to take the vowel valley board with them while they work around the room!
A vowel bulletin board looks great but more importantly, it is an amazing tool for your students to use as they grow as readers and writers!
Make sure to check out these Vowel Valley Sound Wall posters, as they are sure to be the perfect addition to your teaching space. These posters provide an excellent visual for students on what makes a vowel a vowel!
Happy Reading!
