About this activity
Sixteen words covering four diphthong spellings: coin, join, boil and soil for oi; boy, toy, joy and enjoy for oy; cloud, house, mouse and found for ou; cow, now, brown and town for ow. Two sounds, four spellings — and the pairing is regular in a way students can actually use, which is the reason to teach them together.
How to use it in a session
Teach the position rule, because it is genuinely reliable. Oi and ou appear in the middle of a word — coin, cloud — and oy and ow appear at the end — boy, cow. Sort the sixteen by that rule and let the student see it hold. Enjoy is the useful test case, since the sound is at the end of the word even though the word is long. Ten minutes covers the sixteen with the sorting step.
What to listen for
Watch for the vowel being read as two separate sounds. A diphthong glides from one vowel to another within a single syllable, and a student who reads cloud as clo-ud has split it. Notice the ow spelling, which is the one genuine ambiguity here — it makes the sound in cow and a different one in snow — and is worth flagging so the student is not surprised later.
Carrying it home
These words are common: house, town, boy, cow. Pointing out that oi and oy make the same sound in different places is a one-sentence explanation that clears up a lot of spelling confusion.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Second and third, as part of structured phonics work on vowel teams.
- Do I need to sign up?
- No, all sixteen words play free.
- How do students know whether to write oi or oy?
- Position. Oi goes in the middle of a word and oy at the end — coin and boy. The same rule holds for ou and ow, with the exception that ow also appears in the middle of some words.