What words have the long a sound

Long A Sound, List of Long A Words and Worksheets

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The long a sound can be spelled several ways. The magic e or final e and the open syllable are the most common ways. In addition, the long a sound can be represented in 2 vowel teams (“ai” and “ay”). Of course, there will be exceptions or odd balls- the irregular vowel team (“ei”).

Five Ways to Spell the Long A Sound

1. Magic E (VCe or a_e)

The magic E rule states when a word contains the letter “e” at the end, it is usually silent and the preceding vowel says its name (long sound), e.g., cake and date.

2. Vowel Team – AI

The vowel team rule states when two vowels go walking the first does the talking and the second vowel is silent. The combination of both an “a” and an “i” (double vowels) results in the long a sound. There are many AI words, e.g., maid, brain and paint.

3. Vowel Team – AY

As noted above, when two vowels go walking the first does the talking. The combination of both an “a” and “y” can result in the long a sound. The AY words, e.g., day and say, are not as plentiful as the AI words.

4. Irregular Vowel Team – EI

The vowel team rule states when two vowels go walking the first does the talking and the second vowel is silent. Like most things in life, there are exceptions. The combination of the vowels “e” and “i” can result in the long a sound, e.g., eight, sleigh, neigh and weigh.

5. Open Syllable – Long A

An open syllable occurs when a vowel is at the end of the syllable (it is not closed by a consonant), e.g., A/pril and ha/zy.

Long A Words

The table below contains 169 long A words. The words are categorized into one of the five ways the long a sound can be spelled – Magic E Rule, Vowel Teams (2), Irregular Vowel Team and Open Syllable.

Long A Worksheets

We created 30 worksheets to assist a child in learning the various ways the long A sound can be spelled.

Source: Fry, E. B., Ph.D. & Kress, J.E., Ed.D. (2006). The Reading
Teacher’s Book of Lists 5th Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass

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Long Vowel Sounds: Word Lists & Activities

Phonics | Spelling

ByDelilah Orpi

This post may contain affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through these links. Please read the disclosure policy for more details.

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In this post, I’m breaking down long vowel sounds (or long vowel words) to help you teach them when working with struggling readers and spellers.

Looking for long vowel word lists? Download all 5 of my pdf long vowel sounds word lists in my freebies library by joining my email list below.

What is a long vowel sound?

Long vowel sounds are vowels that are pronounced the same as their name. You’ll often hear teachers say that long vowels “say their name”.

Long vowels are very common but they can be tricky because there are so many spellings for each long vowel sound.

There are actually 4 ways to make long vowel sounds:

1. Vowels at the end of a syllable make the long sound. For example, in the words me and halo (ha-lo) the vowels are all at the end of a syllable so they make the long sound.
2. Silent e makes the previous vowel long. The words bike and phone have a silent e at the end that makes the previous vowel long.
3. Vowel teams can make the long sound. Vowel teams work together to make one sound, and usually, it’s a long vowel sound. For example, boat and meat both have vowel teams that make the long sound.
4. I or O can be long when they come before two consonants. In words like cold and mind, i and o make a long vowel sound.

Long Vowel Words

Long vowel sound words are words that have vowels that say their name. Below are a few examples:

• Long a – baby, cake, rain, day, they, weigh
• Long e – me, eve, hear, meet, piece, candy
• Long i – silent, bike, light, my
• Long o – go, home, toe, boat, snow
• Long u – music, mule, pew, feud

Long A Sound

The long a sound can be represented by 8 different spelling patterns:

1. a – baby
2. a_e – cake
3. ai – rain
4. ay – play
5. ei – reindeer
6. eigh – weight
7. ea – steak
8. ey – they

Learn more about teaching the long a sound here, and check out my Long A Words Activities & Worksheets for printable activities.

Long E Sound

The long e sound can be represented by 8 different spelling patterns:

1. e – be
2. e_e – eve
3. ee – meet
4. ea – beach
5. ei – protein
6. ie – piece
7. ey – key
8. y – candy

For ideas, tips, and tricks when teaching the long e sound, read this post all about teaching the long e vowel sound, and check out my Long E Words Activities & Worksheets for printable activities.

Long I Sound

The long i sound can be represented by 6 different spelling patterns:

1. i – silent
2. i_e – shine
3. ie – pie
4. igh – light
5. y – my
6. y_e – type

You can learn more about teaching the long I sound in this post. And check out my Long I Worksheets set in my shop for printable activities on the long i sound.

Long O Sound

The long o sound can be represented by 5 different spelling patterns:

1. o – go
2. o_e – phone
3. oe – toe
4. oa – boat
5. ow – snow

You can learn more about teaching long o words and check out my long o worksheets.

Long U Sound

The long u has two sounds: yoo (/y/ /oo/) and oo (/oo/).

The long u sound can be represented by 7 different spelling patterns:

1. u – music
2. u_e – mule
3. ue – rescue
4. eu – feud
5. ew – few
6. oo – food
7. ou – soup

Learn more about teaching the long u sound here.

Tips for teaching the long vowel sounds

Teach one spelling pattern at a time!

I don’t mean one vowel sound, but just one spelling pattern. So for example, if you’re working on long a, you would work on the spelling pattern a silent e (cake, same, cave) until students have mastered it, then move on to ai, and so on. You should not be teaching multiple spelling patterns together, even though they make the same sound.

I know that most programs out there combine all the long vowel sound spelling patterns into one lesson, especially in spelling lists, but this does not work for struggling readers. You need to break it down for them and only do one at a time.

Teach the syllable types.

Because syllables have a lot to do with whether vowels make the short or long sound, if students do not already know the 6 syllable types then teach them along with the long vowel sound.

Here are resources for each syllable type:

• closed syllable
• open syllable
• final silent e syllable
• vowel team syllable
• r combination syllable
• consonant le syllable

Use a variety of activities to practice each spelling pattern.

Games, dictation, word sorts, memory or matching with flashcards, word hunts, textured writing, body spelling, and bingo are all fun ways to practice the long vowel sounds.

The main activity that is often overlooked is dictation. It seems so simple but the task involves listening to a word, deciding on the spelling, and transferring that info to written form. These are all skills that struggling readers need to practice.

Teach the spelling generalizations.

Some of the long vowel spelling patterns are spelling rules that make it easy to remember.

For example, ai is usually found at the beginning or middle of a syllable, and ay is usually found at the end of a syllable. [Examples: rain, aim, play, daytime]

Here is another example with long o: oa is usually found at the beginning or middle of a word, and ow is usually found at the end. [Examples: boat, coach, snow]

Long Vowel Word List

I made these word lists to help teach the long vowels. I find it handy to have these on hand when playing phonics games or planning activities for long vowel lessons.

Grab them for free below!

Want to remember this? Save Long Vowel Sounds: Word Lists & Activities to your favorite Pinterest board!

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Delilah Orpi

Delilah Orpi is the founder of Thrive Literacy Corner. She has a Bachelor's degree in Special Education, a Master's degree in TESOL, and is a member of the International Dyslexia Association. She is an experienced educator and literacy specialist trained in Orton Gillingham and Lindamood Bell. Delilah creates literacy resources for educators and parents and writes to create awareness about dyslexia and effective literacy instruction based on the science of reading.

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Sounds uː, ʊ, ʊǝ - examples, pronunciation, tongue twisters

We continue the phonetic rubric, the slogan of which is: English sounds are not equal to Russian ones. To learn the correct pronunciation, we have developed a recipe: we take a “bunch” of similar sounds, compare them with each other and with their Russian counterparts. Then we practice pronunciation and literally “train” the speech apparatus to the correct position with the help of several dozen example words and tongue twisters.

A line from a famous song will help to fix the result, which will cut into the auditory memory and will not let you forget the sound!

Today we will take sounds similar to the Russian sound |у| is a long diphthongoid |uː|, short |ʊ| and the diphthong |ʊǝ|.

Long sound |uː| - round, but do not stick out

Pronounced in the words goose, too, rule , etc. This sound is very similar to ours, but there are two main differences:

1. English | uː | is a diphthongoid. That is, this is one sound, but we hear in it the “overtone” of the second sound (also | u |, but deeper), because the tongue and lips slightly change their position during pronunciation: the tongue moves back and up in the oral cavity. The lips are visibly rounded at the beginning and become even more rounded as the tongue moves.

2. To speak English | uː | lips are rounded, but not protruding forward. To see the difference, compare the two pictures. At the first, Russian-speaking singer Keti Topuria pronounces the word " y I fly" in the song of the same name. In the second picture, the English-speaking presenter from the previous video says one of the example words.

Think you can see the difference? 🙂

As a bonus, I'll tell you about one more important point: in combination | ju: |, which may remind you of the sounds of our letter "yu" (as in the word " yu la" ) - the preceding vowel is not softened! For example, in the words f ew, n ew, t une - we first pronounce the hard consonant and only then raise the middle back of the tongue to the hard palate for | | ju: |.

Got it? Did you catch the differences? We begin to work out the correct position on a set of words.

goose |ɡuːs|

who |huː|

through |θruː|

few |fjuː|

group |ɡruːp|

move |muːv|

you |juː|

threw |θruː|

yew |juː|

too |tuː|

tool|tuːl|

tooth |tuːθ|

cool |kuːl |

rule |ruːl |

school |skuːl |

use |juːz|

tune |tjuːn|

fool |fuːl |

soon |suːn|

new |njuː|

do |duː|

two |tuː| oo ms and fr ui t j ui ce.