How to Master Long Vowel Sounds (Freebie Inside!)

During my previous 8 years in second grade, there were many annual phenomena that would always stand out to me. The inevitable backwards “b”s at the beginning of the year, the first child each year calling me “mom” accidentally, the unavoidable and unfortunate yearly trend that is sweeping the nation to name a few. The one that always is the most confusing to me, the absolute unsolved mystery, is the disappearance of the long vowel sounds.

It happens every year. We start the year with open and closed sounds. Students are quickly able to show complete mastery of the concept! Perfect! Time to move on to magic e. I introduce magic e and once again, the students are able to quickly pick up on the skill and display understanding on their tests. I grade them and all of the magic e words are perfect! Unfortunately, however, the open syllable long vowels have seemingly disappeared…now EVERY WORD has a magic e, even the words they were previously spelling correctly with an open syllable.

It gets weirder and weirder.

As we move onto vowel teams, magic e start silently disappearing. Everything is now a vowel team. No open syllables or magic e words can be found in any of my students’ writing.

Where did they go?

I have found that my students have short memories. Whatever the newest phoneme is, that is what they want to use for everything. I needed a solution and I needed it fast.

That’s when I decided to create the “Ways to Say” coloring pages. The idea is simple and friendly! These fun-filled coloring sheets are color by code pages that allow students to practice and be re-familiarized with ALL the ways they have learned to say a long vowel sound, not just the most recent.

Each vowel pack has 10 different coloring pages and answer keys. You can also snag the bundle of all 5 vowels and enjoy 50 different coloring pages! You could do a page a week and have your students keeping their long vowel sound sounds sharp all year long!

Did we mention that our “a” and “e” long vowel packs have three levels of differentiation depending on how many ways your student has learned? This makes a perfect extension or scaffold for individual students.

Once I started doing a weekly coloring page, all my missing phonemes and graphemes started to reappear once again. The mystery of the missing vowel sounds was solved! They were there all along, the students just needed a reminder!

If you are having the same issues, grab these pages and then let us know the results! From one teacher to another, I promise they make an impact!