Vowel Digraphs & Diphthongs Teaching Resources

Explore vowel digraphs lists and worksheets and vowel diphthongs games, activities and more — all created by teachers for teachers like you!

Aligned with the Australian English V9 curriculum, the resources in this collection were designed with your lesson plans — and your students — in mind. Best of all, each digital and printable resource has undergone a thorough review by the expert teachers on the Teach Starter team to ensure it's classroom-ready.

New to teaching this section of the curriculum? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including definitions you can use with your students to explain each of these phonics concepts.

What Is a Vowel Digraph?

Introducing vowel digraphs to your class for the first time? Here's a simple definition to explain their meaning.

Vowel digraphs are groups of two or more vowels that work together to make a specific sound. These vowels work just like a sports team or a team of superheroes, joining forces to create new sounds.

You may also hear these called vowel teams.

What Is a Vowel Diphthong and How Is It Different From a Vowel Digraph?

If a vowel digraph is the same as a vowel team, does that mean it's the same as a vowel diphthong, too?

The short answer is not necessarily!

The longer answer? Digraphs and diphthongs don't just have the 'di' prefix in common. They're also both names for combinations of vowels found in words.

In fact, a diphthong is a type of digraph!

But these two building blocks of the English language have some key differences that are worth visiting before you dive into teaching them.

Here are their key differences.

Vowel Digraphs

When two vowels that are side-by-side in a word work together to represent a single, specific sound or phoneme, it's called a 'vowel digraph' or a 'vowel team.'

When it comes to vowel teams or digraphs:

The vowels in the team create a single, unified sound.
They often represent long vowel sounds, short vowel sounds or other specific vowel sounds.

Examples:

ai in rain (pronounced as a long a sound)
oa in boat (pronounced as a long o sound)

Vowel Diphthongs

Vowel diphthongs are pairs of adjacent vowels that combine to produce what's called a glide or a blending of two distinct vowel sounds within a single syllable.

When it comes to vowel diphthongs:

The pronunciation starts with the sound of the first vowel and glides into the sound of the second vowel without a clear break between them.
They often create a unique sound that's different from the individual vowel sounds.

Examples:

oi in coin (the o sound glides into the i sound, rather than them being separate sounds)
ou in cloud (the o sound glides into the u sound, rather than them being separate sounds)

Common Vowel Digraphs to Teach Your Students

We have already touched on some vowel digraphs or teams, but if you need a handy list of examples to share with your students, we've got you covered! Here are some of the more common vowel teams we teach our students, plus some examples of words with each digraph.

ai

This vowel team makes the long a sound.
Examples include rain, train, pain, sail and mail.

ea

This vowel digraph can represent different sounds — including the long e and short e sounds — depending on the word.
Examples with the long e sound include eat, sea, team and read.
Examples with the short e sound include bread, head and thread.

ee

The ee vowel digraph produces the long e sound.
Examples: tree, bee, see and meet.

ie

This vowel digraph can make the long i sound.
Examples of the ie digraph include pie, tie and lie.

oa

The oa vowel digraph typically makes the long o sound.
Examples in this vowel team include boat, toast and road.

oi

The oi vowel team creates the oy sound.
Examples include coin and voice.

The vowel team "oi" is commonly found in words like noise and poise.

ue

This digraph often makes the long u sound.
Examples include blue and clue.

oo

The oo vowel team can produce two different but distinct sounds — the long u sound and the short oo sound.
Examples with the long u sound include moon, soon and spoon.
Examples with the short oo sound include book, look and cook.