Long I and Short I Resources

Understanding the phonetic sounds each letter makes is something students typically learn as they learn the alphabet. As we memorize the sequence, we associate each letter with an object starting with that letter. But some letters make more than one sound. Vowels, like the letter i, have two different sounds they can make based on how they’re used: the long vowel sound and the short vowel sound.
The short i makes the vowel sound most commonly associated with the letter as seen in bit, clip, hid, and tip. The long i sound makes the sound of the name of the letter in question as seen in bite, hide, sight, and might.
There are certain rules that you can teach students that will help them to know what sound the vowel is making in a particular word:

• If a word only has one syllable and the vowel comes at the beginning, it will make the short vowel sound (e.g. in, if, is)
• When a word ends in with a silent e, sometimes called the magic e, the vowel will make the long sound (e.g. hide, bite, site)
• If the vowel is in a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word, it will typically make the short vowel sound (e.g. hit, bit, sit)
• The vowel digraph (vowel pairs that make a single vowel sound) “ei” will sometimes make the long I sound (e.g. height and sleight)

Practicing with the resources provided by Education.com above may help you students learn to identify these rules in real world scenarios and apply them to their pronunciation.