Long vowel sounds and their many spellings
Each long vowel sound in English can be spelt five or six different ways. By Year 6, children know the common spellings; the errors come from the rarer ones, like eigh in neighbour and ui in bruise. Position rules and word sorts help.
One sound, many spellings
Phonics teaches children that each sound can be written in more than one way. In Year 6, the job is to choose the right spelling in longer, less familiar words. The word lists come in two forms for this: by sound, with every spelling of one sound together, and by spelling pattern, with one set of letters and every sound it makes.
| Sound | Common spellings | Year 6 examples |
|---|---|---|
| 'ay' as in rain | a-e, ai, ay, a, eigh, ei, ey, ea | persuade, campaign, always, neighbour, reign, obey, great |
| 'ee' as in see | ee, ea, e-e, e, ie, ei, y | agree, decrease, extreme, achieve, receive |
| 'igh' as in night | igh, i-e, y, i, ie, eigh | lightning, recognise, supply, climb, height |
| 'oh' as in boat | oa, ow, o-e, oe, o, ou | approach, tomorrow, suppose, potatoes, shoulder |
| 'oo' as in moon | oo, u-e, ue, ew, ui, ou, o | attitude, queue, renew, bruise, group |
Position rules that work
Some spellings are tied to where they appear in a word. These are worth teaching because they're reliable:
- play, always / rain, straightay usually at the end of a word or syllable; ai in the middle.
- rescue, value / few, renewue and ew often end a word.
- potatoes, tomatoesMany nouns ending in o add -es in the plural.
ie and ei
“i before e except after c” works well, as long as children only use it when the word makes an 'ee' sound: achieve, believe, field; but receive, ceiling, deceive. It doesn't work for other sounds (reign, eight, height), which is why the rule gets a bad reputation. Seize and protein are the main exceptions within the 'ee' group.
The rare spellings cause the errors
Children rarely misspell rain or boat. They misspell straight, neighbour, height, shoulder, queue and bruise, because these use spellings they meet less often. A class list of these less common spellings (eigh, ei, ey, ou, ui, ue), added to whenever one turns up in reading, gives children somewhere to look.
Height is the odd one out of the eigh family: it says 'igh' while eight, weight and neighbour say 'ay'. Teach it with the others so the difference stands out.
In the SATs
Words like straight, achieve, lightning, tomorrow and queue are typical of the SATs spelling paper, and several are on the Year 5 and 6 statutory word list. Because the dictation sentence gives the meaning, children also need to tell apart near-identical words, such as lightning (the flash) and lightening (making lighter).
Common mistakes
- recieve'ee' sound after c: receive.
- straitA different word. 'Not bent' is straight.
- hightIt's height, like eight.
- kewIt's queue: four vowels in a row.
Teaching ideas
Sort by spelling
Give pupils the words for one sound and ask them to sort by spelling. Then they look at where each spelling sits in the word. Children who find the position rules themselves apply them more readily.
Rare spellings wall
Keep a display of the less common spellings, one card per grapheme, with words added as children find them. eigh might collect neighbour, weigh, sleigh, freight over a term.
Which sound?
Use the pattern lists in reverse: give a grapheme such as ie and ask pupils to read the words aloud and sort them by sound (achieve, pie, variety). It builds the flexibility they need with unfamiliar words.
Homophone check
Many long-vowel words have homophones (straight, strait; reign, rain, rein). Pairing them in sentences forces children to think about meaning as well as sound.
Try it: five quick questions
SATs-style questions to use as a starter or a quick check. Tap to see each answer.
Which is correct? beleive / believe
Show answer
believe: 'ee' sound, not after c.
Which is correct? ceiling / cieling
Show answer
ceiling: 'ee' sound after c.
Spell the plural of tomato.
Show answer
tomatoes
Which is correct? neighbour / naybour
Show answer
neighbour
Fill the gap: We saw a flash of ___ in the storm.
Show answer
lightning
Free worksheets for this topic
Printable A4 PDFs with answers. Free to use in class or at home.
