What are vowels and consonants?

They then move on to read and write CCVC words such as trip, stop, pram.

They also learn CVCC words such as milk, lamp, tusk.

Children will also learn that sometimes two vowels are put together to make one sound, such as ai, oo, ea, ie which can be found in words such as rain, boot, read and pie. When two vowels are put together to make one sound, this is called a vowel digraph.

They also learn that sometimes two consonants are put together to make one sound, such as th, ch and sh which can be found in words such as bath, chip and mash. When two consonants are put together to make one sound, this is called a consonant digraph.

Teachers may or may not make children aware of all the linguistic vocabulary in bold above. It is not necessarily important that they know these words or can define them: the most important thing is that they learn to read and write individual letters and words with confidence through thorough step-by-step phonics activities.

Children moving up the school may notice certain things about vowels and consonants. For example, in English we rarely have three or more vowels together; beautiful, queue, liaise, quail, quiet, squeal are some of the few words that use this spelling pattern.

Another thing children may notice is that every word in the English language contains a vowel. This is quite a useful thing to know when playing hangman: go for the vowels first!