New and Improved Short Vowels Practice Sets

Version 2

When I published the first version of my Short Vowels Practice Sets, I didn’t fully understand how such a simple resource could be transformative for a child’s confidence. In writing those 4 sets, I was only responding to a need I noticed in my students, as I always do. Now, over two-and-a-half years later, I have used the sets multiple times across age groups with children with and without learning disabilities. I have seen first-hand when and how the sets succeed and when and how they fall short. Encouraged by the many teachers and parents whose frustration and anxiety this resource has allayed, I am now publishing version 2.

This new and improved version has over 250 minimal pairs spread across 12 sets in 81 pages. I have also animated the first 5 sets because of the drastic reduction in overwhelm I witnessed in my students when I presented the words one at a time instead of all at once. The sets are not just black and white tables anymore. They are coloured and have cute puppies that hope to make children smile.

The most important change to the sets, however, is that they now reveal how short vowels interact with the consonants that follow them. This has helped me teach students more efficiently while grounding their understanding of how English orthography works.

Is this resource for you?

While I originally created this resource for children with learning disabilities, I have since used it successfully with children without disabilities especially when they have had to endure bad, hurried or no teaching at school.

• If you are working with a child who misreads short vowels even after what feels like enough practice, this resource is for you.

• If you are just beginning to teach vowels and 2- and 3-letter words to a child and would like a comprehensive resource that will minimize confusion and provide structured and sufficient practice, this resource is for you.

• If your child didn’t have any issues with short vowels in the beginning but is now beginning to get them wrong when s/he reads or spells words such as well/will or check/chick, this resource is for you.

• If your child forgets to double the <l> in words like tall or writes pic or pik instead of pick, this resource is for you.

• If you suspect your child has a learning disability or is diagnosed with one, and s/he has trouble with short vowels, this resource is for you.

• If you’re a teacher who’d like a comprehensive resource for teaching short vowels, the floss spelling rule, and when to use <ck>, <tch>, <dge> instead of <c, k>, <ch>, <g, j>, this resource is for you.

What does it look like?

Here’s a sneak peak:

What is the struggle with short vowels?

The ability to differentiate between short vowels and correctly and instantaneously identify them in words is fundamental to learning to read. When a student has dyslexia, a learning difficulty or has been subjected to bad, wrong, hurried or no teaching, they may struggle in telling the short vowels apart in both reading and spelling. When this student is also required to read and spell long vowels, vowel digraphs and vowel trigraphs, the confusion compounds and leads to high cognitive load and low confidence.

The problem is exacerbated by at least two other factors:

1. the fact that short and long vowels are misnomers in present-day English. The vowels were actually short and long in Old English much like the short and long vowels in Kannada (ಅ ಆ) and Hindi (अ आ). In present-day English, there’s nothing short about short vowels and nothing long about long vowels. They are just different vowels.

2. the names of the letters and the phonemes they represent:

   • <e> represents [ɛ] (set), but <i> represents [ɪ] (sit), which can sound very much like the name of <e>.

   • <a> represents [æ] (sat), but its name can sound very similar to the [ɛ] (set), represented by <e>

   • The first akshara in most Indian languages is closest to [ʌ] (umbrella) but short <a> is different.

The pattern I see with struggling readers is somewhat consistent. Most children pick up consonant grapheme-phoneme correspondences faster than vowel grapheme-phoneme correspondences (barring confusions such as the ones between <b> and <d>). They are also mostly comfortable with the short <a>, i.e., [æ] (as in apple) which is usually taught first. The struggle begins when other short vowels are added to the mix. Their struggle presents itself in different ways:

• They read other vowels as [æ] too. For example, they might read <set> as [sæt] (sat) instead of [sɛt] (set).

• They guess with all the vowel sounds they know. For example, they might try to read <set> as [sæt] (sat), [sɛt] (set), [sɪt] (sit), etc., and look at your facial expressions for a clue to choose one. They may also use pictures or other clues in the text to guess. The moment you notice the child is guessing, you know there is a problem that needs immediate attention.

What does a child struggling with short vowels benefit from?

What helps a child struggling with short vowels or any other aspect of learning to read is threefold:

1. patience, the ability of the adult to wait as long as it takes for the child to work out the differences, without frustration and hurry

2. practice, the opportunity to wrestle with the confusion regularly, preferably for a few short minutes every day instead of long stretches of time once in a while

3. reading materials that target their needs and build and support their learning and understanding systematically

Resources such as the Merrill Linguistic Readers or Phonics Pathways partially address (3). The short vowels practice sets are meant to further reduce the gap in the availability of (3) and ensure that the child with even severe learning disabilities and difficulties is able to succeed with abundant opportunities for practice.

How is this resource different from any short vowel word list available on the Internet?

1. The sets use minimal pairs to bring the child’s attention to the vowel in the word systematically, consistently, and to an extent predictably.

2. The sets are almost exhaustive. They use all possible relevant minimal pairs in English except those words that are inappropriate for children. This allows the child and the adult to have patience with themselves no matter how long it takes to get them right.

3. The sets reveal how short vowels interact with consonants that follow them. This deepens the child’s understanding of English orthography and makes further reading and spelling such as the floss rule immediately and easily accessible.

What’s on the other side of the paywall?

1. An Introduction and Usage Guide

2. 13 PDFs, one for each of the 12 sets, plus one master file with all the sets

3. Links to ready-to-use animations for the first 5 sets

Is this a Phonics or a phonology-first resource?

NO!

This question is mostly for folks who practise Structured Word Inquiry and denounce phonics. To be clear, I am one of them.

While I don’t teach using phonics or imply ‘phonology-first’ or ‘phonology-only’ in any of my lessons, I do find that using controlled texts such as this resource or linguistic readers for a few minutes every day provides the structure, pacing, and practice dyslexic students usually benefit from. I am always very careful about which children need this practice and how long I expose them to controlled texts as opposed to rich and enjoyable children’s literature. I never use this resource or any controlled text for more than 5-10 minutes a day, and I advise the same in the user guide as well.

I don’t teach or imply to my students that <a, e, i, o, u> only represent [æ, ɛ, ɪ, ɒ, ʌ]. They know that each of these vowels and every other letter in the English alphabet represents more than one phoneme. These sets are designed to help them master the short vowels specifically.

You can subscribe to my Substack or buy this resource directly on Gumroad.