Q's Best Friend
Queen, quarter, quilt, quill, quiet, quite, quick, quit, question, quack, quality, quip, quintuplet, quagmire, squint, squat, squirt, squirrel...
Have you ever noticed that Q is almost never without U?
Because of Q and U are consistently together, when we introduce the letter Q to kids, we teach QU as consonant together. We use our flashcards to teach all consonants, including QU. The card, qu, sound /kw/, keyword: queen.
I like telling the kids a short story of how Q's best friend is U which is also when I repeatedly say the QU spelling rule that you can find at the back of the qu card:
Q and U are best friends, they stick together and they make 1 sound. The sound is /kw/.
This would help kids to see "qu" as one sound when trying to read them in a word instead of being confused that the u is to be sounded out as a vowel. This also helps kids to spell both q and u together when they hear the /kw/ sound in a word.
You can also check out this reel I posted about the QU spelling rule on Instagram!