Search Long U/Short U Educational Resources

You can help students master their pronunciation of the long U and short U with the following Education.com worksheets, activities, and games. Before long, students who understand the different ways to say the letter U will be dreaming of undertaking undergraduate studies at university.

Most of the letters in the English alphabet are able to make more than one phonetic sound. Whether they are part of a vowel digraph, a consonant digraph, or under the influence of a silent e, there are many factors that may change the sound a letter makes. Vowels, like the letter U, have at least two sounds; the long and short vowel sounds.

The short sound of a vowel makes the sound students would most associate with that letter. In the case of the letter u this would be an uh sound as heard in cup and udder. The long sound sounds like the name of the letter as in cute and rebuke.

Students will discover that there are rules that these letters will most often follow that indicate which sounds each vowel should make. Working with students using the resources provided by Education.com may help students learn to recognize these rules and know when to use which vowel sound. Here are some of the rules:

• Single syllable words with the vowel as the first letter will use the short vowel sound
  • Up
  • Us
• When the vowel calls between two consonants in words called consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), they will make the short vowel sound
  • Cup
  • Run
• The silent e falling at the end of the word indicates that the vowel should make the long sound
  • Brute
  • Rude

There are exceptions to the rules. Some u words use a sound known as the short-oo. For example put, push, bull. Sometimes the letter u even makes a short i sound as in busy and business.