Encoding Long Vowel Digraphs Worksheets

Teaching kids to encode long vowel digraphs aligns with the principles of the science of reading, which emphasizes evidence-based strategies to enhance literacy skills. Understanding and encoding long vowel digraphs, such as ‘ai’ and ‘ea,’ helps children develop phonemic awareness, an essential skill in early literacy. The science of reading underscores the importance of explicitly teaching the relationship between sounds and letters, and long vowel digraphs exemplify these consistent patterns. This approach supports the development of orthographic mapping, where children form connections between sounds and their corresponding spellings.

Using these worksheets, students will encode long vowel digraphs helping them internalize the long vowel digraph patterns, contributing to improved word recognition, spelling and overall reading proficiency. For each worksheet, students are to find the word that matches an image and then write that correct word underneath the image. The following long vowel digraphs are included:

• ai, ay and a_e
• ee, ea and ey
• i_e and ie
• oa, o_e, ow and oe

More Long Vowel Digraph Activities

Are you looking for some more long vowel digraph activities/games to use in small phonics rotations? Check out these awesome activity ideas:

• Sorting games – focusing on one particular phoneme and sorting the different vowel digraph graphemes.
• Word hunts – stick words around the classroom and have students go on a hunt for particularly long vowel digraphs.
• Building words – use letter tiles and have students build words with long vowel digraphs.
• Long vowel digraph bingo!

Download and Print Today!

Use the dropdown menu to choose between the easy-to-print PDF version of this resource or the editable Google Slide version.

This resource was created by Lisamarie Del Valle, a teacher in Florida and a Teach Starter collaborator.

More Long Vowel Digraph Activities

Looking for more printable resources to help teach long vowel digraphs in your phonics lessons? We have you covered…

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Long Vowel Digraph Cut-and-Paste Worksheet

Reinforce your students' knowledge of long vowel digraphs with this set of cut-and-paste worksheets.

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Decode words with vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds using this set of 26 dominoes.

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OA Long Vowel Teams Bingo Game

Practice decoding words with OA vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds with this BINGO game for up to 18 players.