Teaching long vowel sounds
Aim: Spell long vowel sounds with a split digraph or the right vowel team.
How to explain it
A long vowel says its own name. It can be spelled with a split digraph, where a silent e at the end changes the vowel (cake, bike, home), or with a vowel team (ai, ee, igh, oa, ue). Dropping the silent e turns the long vowel short and makes a different word: hope becomes hop, cute becomes cut.
Starter (5 minutes)
Show 'hop' and 'hope', 'cut' and 'cute'. Children read both and say what the e is doing.
Main activity
Magic e transform: children write short-vowel words on strips (tap, pin, not, cub) and fold on a card with an e to change them (tape, pine, note, cube). Then sort a mixed list by how the long vowel is spelled.
Dictation sentences
- I rode my bike home in the rain.
- The boat sailed on the blue sea at night.
- We made a cake with a few friends.
Watch out for
- Leaving off the silent e (cak, bik, hom).
- Using the wrong vowel team (boet, nite).
Quick check
Ask children to spell these without help:
- shine
- those
- tie
- grow
Example words
- cake
- bike
- home
- cube
- rain
- feet
- seat
- night
- boat
- snow
- blue
- few