Long U Words

A silent e on the end reaches back over one consonant and makes the u say its name. Cub becomes cube, tub becomes tube, cut becomes cute, us becomes use.

This is the one section where both long u sounds sit side by side. Cube, cute and mule say /yoo/. Tube and flute say /oo/. Same spelling, two sounds, and nothing on the page tells a child which. Reading them one after the other is the fastest way to make that concrete.

Silent-e words has the full lists across all five vowels, and the short-to-long pairs these words come from.

Ue and ew both sit at the end of a word, and there is no rule between them. Blue, glue, true. Few, new, grew, chew. A child has to learn which word takes which, the same way ee and ea have to be learned on the long e page.

Both do both sounds too. Blue and glue say /oo/; rescue and value say /yoo/. Few and new say /yoo/; grew and chew say /oo/. Two spellings, two sounds, no marker: this is the section where long u is at its most awkward, and saying so is more use than a rule that fails.

The sound boxes are worth doing here. Blue is three sounds from four letters, and ue goes into one box whole.

These are the two spellings a child can rely on, because both say /oo/ and never /yoo/. Fruit, juice, suit. Moon, spoon, broom, school.

Ui is a short list rather than a pattern, and it is worth naming because it looks like it should say something else: two vowel letters that together say neither of their own names.

Oo does not always belong here. It says the long sound in moon, spoon and broom, and a shorter sound in book, wood and foot. Only the first kind is a long u word, and vowel team words covers both halves side by side.

Long u is two sounds and the letter’s own name is why. Say the alphabet letter u out loud: there is a y at the front of it. Cube, music, unicorn and mule keep that y and say /yoo/. Blue, moon, flute and fruit drop it and say /oo/.

Both are called long u, which is the part that causes the trouble. A child taught that u says its name hears cube and agrees, then hears blue and does not, and concludes they have got something wrong. They have not.

No spelling tells you which half you are in. Cube and tube are both u_e and they are different sounds. Few and grew are both ew and they are different sounds. The sort below is by sound rather than by spelling for exactly that reason, and it is the one sheet on this page that could not be a spelling sort.

Say the two words one after the other and ask which one you said second. Cub and cube. Tub and tube. Cut and cute. Us and use. The silent e is the whole difference.

Every long word in these pairs is the /yoo/ half, which is worth noticing. The /oo/ half of long u has no short twin to pair with at all, so the minimal-pair trick that works for the other four vowels only reaches half of this one. That is one more reason to teach the two sounds as two sounds.

The picture sort works by sound and the word sort works by sight. Both are the same question asked at two different stages.

Where to go next depends on which part your child found hard.

• If blue was the word that stopped them, the two-sounds section above is the one to come back to. It is the single most useful thing on this page and it is not a rule to practise, it is a fact to know.
• If oo is running together with the oo in book and wood, vowel team words has both halves side by side with their own sheets.
• This is the last of the five vowels. Long vowel words mixes all five with a picture sort and a sound bingo game, which is where to go once each one is solid on its own.
• Long vowel sounds explains the whole set with a printable chart, and r-controlled vowels is what comes after long vowels: the words where an r changes the vowel again.