The only vowel sound presented so far with the selected decodable words is the short a, and it has been combined with only five single consonants: b, s, m, f, and t.

The next phonogram in Orton’s sequence is the h.  It is interesting to note that one can only begin a word or syllable with the h.  This gives students additional practice manipulating the beginning sound, which tends to be easier than manipulating a vowel or ending consonant sound.  The words hat and ham are now part of a student’s word bank, along with nonsense syllables such as hab like in habit.