3.1 Prepare for 'y' as a Vowel Instruction

Before you teach, you'll need to do a few things to get ready: 

Review the overview of 'y' as a vowel so you feel comfortable talking about the different sounds of 'y' with your students. 

Word selection is key! As you prepare for instruction, it is important to be intentional about the words you choose for your daily dictation lessons. Students should have plenty of practice reading and spelling words with the current skill. Our free Reading Universe 'y' as a vowel word list is a good place to start:

Here are a few important tips for selecting 'y' as a vowel words for your lesson:

• Using the phonics continuum as a guide, choose words with vowel patterns or skills taught prior to the 'y' as a vowel spelling rule to reinforce what students have already learned.
• To deepen students' understanding of language and build vocabulary, select words with 'y' as a vowel that may be unfamiliar to students, like pry or sly, or words that have multiple meanings.
• Embed high-frequency words with 'y' as a vowel — like by, my, funny, and every — into your phonics instruction to give students meaningful opportunities to practice reading and spelling them in isolation and in context. 

If you work with young children, you might want to use The Alphabet Queen story (based on The Alphabet King (opens in new window), an original story by dyslexia therapist Jennings Miller) to introduce 'y' as a vowel. It's a fun, interactive way to make the concept easy to remember. 

The Alphabet Queen story is made up of five parts that you read aloud with students over five separate lessons (they will not be consecutive). The story builds as your lessons on syllable types become more complex — starting with closed syllables, then introducing open syllables, magic 'e', r-controlled vowels, and 'y' as a vowel. You will tell this story during the lesson when you introduce each new phonics pattern. 

In this version of the story, 'y' is the "Sneaky Thief" who slips into the vowels' pen and steals the sounds of long /ī/ and long /ē/. 

Here are some materials you'll need to teach The Alphabet Queen.

Download this ready-to-go set of Google slides with Alphabet Queen story illustrations to project on your whiteboard. 

Be sure to review our lesson plans for introducing 'y' as a vowel, complete with sample words, these lessons are appropriate for students at all grade levels. 

A flash card warm-up helps students connect letters and sounds, builds fluency, and prepares them to read.  You’ll want to run through consonant ‘y’ and all the vowel sounds, so here are flashcards for printing:

• Vowel Flash Cards Without Keyword Pictures
• Consonant ‘y’ in All Letters and Sounds Flash Card Set

For your direct and explicit instruction about ‘y’ as a vowel, print out these two flash card sets:

• Vowel 'y' Flash Cards With and Without Pictures

NOTE: You may want to write examples of vowel 'y'  words on the backs of your flash cards. It's helpful to have examples readily available for your students.

Daily dictation can help students with listening skills, auditory memory, reading and spelling skills, language, and handwriting. As students become more comfortable with spelling words that have ‘y’ as a vowel, use the words in phrases and sentences in your dictation to add rigor to your lesson.

Go to the Resource Hub for a complete collection of word lists, read sheets, and decodables for practicing reading and writing words that have 'y' as a vowel.