Free Long Vowel Worksheets – 5 Printables
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Get 5 free printable worksheets for practicing long vowel sounds. There’s one worksheet for targeted practice of each long vowel sound: long A, long E, long I, Long O, and Long U. Get this engaging, no-prep resource for teaching long vowels and make your instruction fun and meaningful!
Why We Love Them
These free worksheets are perfect for kids to practice long vowels. We love them for SO many reasons, and in our honest opinion, these are the BEST free long vowel worksheets out there! Here’s why you’ll love them, too:
They are fun! Who doesn’t love a maze game? Your students won’t even realize they’re working because they’ll be engaged in a meaningful activity, reading to the finish line!
They are challenging. Kids must practice sound discrimination as they read the word and listen for which vowel sound is long. This is an essential, foundational skill for decoding.
Separated by long vowel sound. We organized the worksheets by long vowel sound, so no matter which long vowel you’re working on, you’ll have the right resource to target the skill!
Practice lots of skills together: There are multiple activities on one worksheet, designed to build skills in decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and writing! One worksheet that does it all!
As an added bonus, we specifically included words with various types of long vowels. Words with open syllables, VCe words, and words with vowel teams (sometimes called vowel digraphs) are included.
Using the Worksheets
There are three parts to each worksheet:
1. Sound Discrimination: Beginning at start, students will read the words that connect to the box. They determine which word (only 1) has the long vowel sound, then color it in. They repeat this procedure until they have colored a path from start to finish with only words containing the targeted long vowel sound!
➡️ For more sound discrimination practice, use our 13 FREE sound sorts!
2. Fluency Practice: Kids read all the words in the colored squares, then check the box. Students are required to read all the words a total of 3 times, making sure to listen to make sure they hear the long vowel sound. This is the perfect opportunity for self-monitoring!
3. Vocabulary and Writing: We always want children to connect to meaning and vocabulary. They’ll choose 1-2 words from the maze, then use them to compose a complete sentence. Students will practice using vocabulary words in context while writing with correct usage, grammar, and punctuation!
Long A Worksheet
Did you know there are 8 ways to spell the Long A sound? Visit our post all about Long A to learn best teaching tips and worksheet with 229+ long A words, organized by spelling pattern.
✅ Answer Key: thank, train, day, paint, blade, rain, cake, baby, may, late, a, lake, tail, say, take, Sunday.
Long E Worksheet
There are 8 ways to spell long E, including with letter y! Get more info about teaching Long E and grab a free printable that includes 233+ long E words.
✅ Answer Key: bee, these, feet, baby, hear, very, she, read, began, eat, he, seen, queen, lazy.
Long I Worksheet
There are the six ways to spell Long I! For more teaching tips, and a free word list, visit our popular post all about Long i Vowel sound words.
✅ Answer Key: time, fly, find, fine, spy, hi, I, high, slime, cry, my, buy, ride, five, pine, kite.
Long O Worksheet
Long O can be spelled using five different patterns. To learn more, and get another free word list, check out our Long O post!
✅ Answer Key: no, hello, home, so, yellow, snow, old, road, nose, mope, told, hope, go, over.
Long U Worksheet
Long U makes two sounds: /oo/ like ruler and /yoo/ like unicorn. That’s why there are TWO mazes on this worksheet!
The first sound of long U – /oo/ – can be spelled seven ways, and the second sound of Long U – /yoo/ – can be spelled five ways!
Teachers typically teach the two sounds at the same time, which helps kids learn and discern between the two different sounds, while also understanding that they’re BOTH long u.
We’ve compiled 215+ Long U words and organized them into two lists based on the two sounds of Long U. Read more and grab your Long U sound word lists, too!
✅ Answer Key /oo/: room, too, doing, flew, shoe, into.
✅ Answer Key /yoo/: use, mute, cube, fuse, mule, puke.
Expert Tips & Info
👉 The words we include on the worksheets are specifically chosen to represent the most common spelling patterns and most are taken from the 1st grade EDL core vocabulary list (Taylor, et al., 1989).
👉 This resource is best for late first-grade and all second and third grade students who have been introduced to the most common long vowel patterns and high-frequency words.
👉 It’s important that you follow an explicit and systematic scope and sequence when introducing and teaching phonograms. It should introduce vowels in order of difficulty (easiest to hardest) and frequency (most common to least common).
For example, the long vowel a-consonant-e pattern (magic e) is easier and more frequent than the ‘ey’ vowel digraph. According to The ABC’s and All Their Tricks, over 1300 words in English follow the ‘a-consonant-e’ pattern, whereas 18 total words include the ‘ey’ vowel digraph.
Download & Print
We’d love to hear about your experience using this resource!
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DOWNLOAD TERMS: All of our resources and printables are designed for personal use only in homes and classrooms. Each teacher must download his or her own copy. Please do not save to a shared drive, reproduce our resources on the web, or make photocopies for anyone besides your own students. To share with others, please use the social share links provided or distribute the link to the blog post so others can download their own copies. Your support in this allows us to keep making free resources for everyone! Please see our Creative Credits page for information about the licensed clipart we use. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our terms, please email us. Thank you!
All of your work is so helpful for parents and teachers! Thank you! I am not tech savvy so I probably did something wrong, but I could only download the a worksheet. For the others I received a message indicating invalid download.
Hi Sandra, I just emailed you! Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Thank you so much! These are great!
Hi Dawn,
So happy to hear you’re finding the resources helpful! We love hearing that!
Katie and Laura
LOVE all your great resources! The kids love them too!
Hi Kim,
Thank you so much! It’s so encouraging to know teachers AND students enjoy the resources we create. We’ll keep making and sharing more with you 😉
Katie and Laura
I absolutely love your site. I am a SLP in the schools. So many kids are struggling with phonemic awareness. These vowel worksheets are perfect. However only the first one -LONG A_ allowed for a download. The remaining worksheets all say—” Invalid download link “—. CAn you advise?
Thanks so much!
Susan
Hi Susan,
Thanks so much for your kind feedback! So sorry for the tech issues. We’ve sent you an email 😉
Katie and Laura
I teach a literacy intervention program in Ontario and I find that your resources are right on target! Honestly so good. So thank you. 🙂 Noelle
Hi Noelle,
We are so pleased to hear you are enjoying using these resources with your students! Thanks for your kind feedback 😉
Katie and Laura