Spelling Long A Vowel Teams like a champ: Is it AI or AY?

Many people think”Spelling Rules” are inconsistent – even when it comes to the long a vowel teams: ai and ay.

“English is irregular,” they say. “If you want to know it, you just have to memorize it,” they say.

In A Fresh Look at Phonics, Wiley Blevins writes, “The truth is that 84%-87% of English words follow common and consistent sound-spelling patterns.”

So, it’s not that English is irregular. It’s that students may not have a strong grasp of the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle is all about the sound-symbol relationship. Our language is made up of sounds and different letter or letter combinations (graphemes) represent those sounds. 

Point blank: it is not enough for students to know the 26 letters in the alphabet along with their 26 “most common” corresponding sounds (okay, let’s make it 31 if we throw in those long vowel sounds).

English is an alphabetic language and YES, it consists of 26 letters. However, there actually 44 unique sounds. Those 44 individual phonemes can be represented a number of different ways. That’s a lot of math – and a lot of spelling combinations!

Letters Represent Sounds

Let’s take the long a sound, for example. The long a vowel sound can be represented by various graphemes. Here are 8 to get your wheels turning:

• a like in “baby”
• a_e like in “cake”
• ai like in “train
• ay like in “say”
• ey like in “they”
• eigh like in “eight”
• ei like in “vein”
• ea like in “break”

Mind blown? You can see how important it is for students to have the understanding that sounds can represented multiple ways. Letters don’t make sounds. Letters can spell sounds. 

With systematic phonics instruction, these graphemes can be explicitly taught to students to build their understanding of how words are spelled. I use the term systematic, because quality instruction will not throw every single solitary long a spelling pattern at a child at once. That would just be pure chaos and cause confusion. 

It is best to follow a strong scope and sequence, and teach sound-spelling patterns according to their frequency. For example, most phonics programs will have you teach the more common phonogram a_e before diving into vowel teams: ai and ay. (For the sake of this blog post, we’ll be focusing on the vowel teams ai and ay only.)

As students expand their phonics knowledge for decoding words, they’ll also need some tips, tools and strategies for encoding words, to help determine which grapheme to utilize.

Spelling Generalization for Long A Vowel Teams: AI or AY?

First of all, I’m big on semantics and being intentional with word choice. I prefer to use the term Spelling Generalizations over Spelling Rules. Rules have the connotation that they are absolute, black and white, with no wiggle room. Generalizations, on the other hand, have a sense of flexibility. They are generally true (in most cases). There may be an outlier every once in awhile.

So, here is the million dollar question: when spelling words with a long a vowel team, when should you use ai or ay?

This spelling generalization is positional. Students will need to have the phonemic awareness skill: isolating the vowel sound – to first determine the position of the vowel sound.

It is also helpful of to have both syllable awareness and knowledge of the vowel team syllable type.

Long A Vowel Team at the Beginning of a Syllable

When you hear the long a sound in the beginning of a syllable, use the grapheme: ai. 

We see this in words like:

• aid, ail, aim

Long A Vowel Team in the Middle of a Syllable

When you hear the long a sound in the middle of a syllable, you will also use the grapheme: ai.

We see this in words like:

• afraid, chain, claim, paint, wait

Long A Vowel Team at the End of a Syllable

When you hear the long a sound at the end of a syllable, use the grapheme: ay.

We see this in words like: 

• clay, display, pray, stay, way

Syllable vs. Word

Notice I used the term syllable. You may hear some people say that “ai comes in the middle of a word and ay comes at the end.” This generalization is not quite concise enough, which can potentially have people go back to the notion that English is irregular.

They might say: “What about words like: crayon, payday, and prayer? ‘Ay’ is in the middle of the word, instead of ‘ai’! These are rule breakers.”

It’s not that these words don’t follow the rule – the actual generalization just needs to include the term SYLLABLE. 

The “ay” vowel team could, in fact, be seen in the middle of a word. Oftentimes, it may be a base word with an inflectional ending or a compound word. However, it will still be at the end of the syllable.

Some more examples where “ay” is in the middle of a word, but end of a syllable are:

• crayfish, daydream, hayride, layer, mayhem, mayor, playful

Never Evers for Long A Vowel Teams

One thing that IS absolute is that English words will never, ever, ever end in the vowel team “ai”.

This actually piggy backs off of another spelling generation that English words do not end in the letter i. (Some exceptions include “hi” – to which some say is actually an abbreviation of “hello” and “ski” – which is not an English word.)

So, students can be rest assured if they hear a word that ends in the long a sound, “ay” should be their first spelling choice. 

Teaching Long A Vowel Teams

When it comes to teaching vowel teams, there is also a difference between reading and spelling. Spelling, or encoding words, is the inverse of reading, or decoding words; it’s a reciprocal relationship.

I once heard a beautiful quote that reading is like breathing in and spelling is like breathing out. (Pam Allyn) Spelling words accurately is the concrete evidence of phonics mastery within a particular concept.

However, when it comes to long vowel teams, spelling mastery is bit more difficult to attain. There are certainly strategies we can use on the teacher end to assist with grasping this concept.

Isolating the Long A Vowel Teams

Students will likely have an easier time learning how to read words with the ai and ay vowel teams, than spelling them. When it comes to dictation, it can be helpful to have students practice words with ai and ay separately. If that is not an option, it’s important to explicitly teach the positioning rule of this spelling generalization, so students can gauge the position of the sound.

While there is a generalization distinguishing between ai and ay, there is not one for a_e. Whether it is a dictation, or if students are authentically writing on their own and need assistance spelling, I’d recommend scaffolding students with a prompt of whether the word has a vowel team or silent e. It is better to provide the scaffold and slowly take it away, than to have students practice incorrect spelling – especially if it is something they have already learned in Phonics.

Focus on Phonemic Awareness

We often hear that reading starts with your hears. Well, so does spelling. To spell well, first students need strong phonemic awareness. Students need to be able to segment the sounds of a word orally (PA) before then assigning the correct graphemes that correspond to each sound (Phonics).

Here is a Phonemic Awareness Routine you can use with your students to help determine whether to use ai or ay:

• Say the word.
• Students repeat the word.
• Segment the sounds together.
• Prompt students: “Where do you hear the long a sound? Beginning, middle, or end?”

*You can even incorporate hand movements across the midline of your body to designate the beginning, middle or end of a word.

*If students have difficulty identifying between all 3 positions, lower the field to 2 positions. Your language may sound like this: “The word is rain. Say rain. (Students repeat the word.) Let’s segment the sounds: /r/-/ai/-/n/. Do we hear the /ai/ sound in the middle or end? (Students should respond, “Middle!”)”

*If students have difficultly expressing the position, try receptive language. Have them show you a thumbs up/thumbs down, as you give the position of the sound. Your language may sound like this: “The word is paid. Say paid. (Students repeat the word.) Now, let’s segment the sounds: /p/-/ai/-/d/. Thumbs up, thumbs down if you hear /ai/ in the middle? (Students should with a thumbs up.)

Utilize Spelling Prompts

While Phonemic Awareness drills are incredible, they are even stronger when you marry it right into Phonics work.

In the same exercise as above, you can utilize some guiding questions or spelling prompts to solidify phonics learning. So, when we were asking about positioning, here is some more sample teacher language to utilize in all 3 scenarios:

• (If the answer was beginning) “Which vowel team represents long a in the beginning of a syllable?” (Students should respond “ai”.)
• (If the answer was middle) “How many syllables are in this word?”
• (If the answer is 1) “Which vowel team represents long a in the middle of a syllable?” (Students should respond “ai”.)

*Note: I would explicitly use the term “vowel team”, as a_e is also a highly probable spelling pattern in this scenario.

• (If the answer is 2+, you might have to go back to doing some Phonological Awareness (segmenting syllables) and Phonemic Awareness (segmenting sounds for the syllable with long a) to determine if the medial position of long a is at the word level AND syllable level.)
• (If the answer was end) Which vowel team represents long a at the end of a syllable? (Students should respond “ay”.)

For longer words (and when applicable), it can also be helpful to ask questions, such as:

• What is the base word? (In words like: days, praying, playful) 
• Is this a compound word? (For words like: daydream and hayride)
• How many syllables are in this word? (In words like: crayon and mayor)

Phonics Mnemonics

Whether it’s a visual or phrase, mnemonics can be great to support and solidify learning. They don’t even have to be fancy. I quickly came up with the sentence:

• On a rainy day, we have to wait to play. 

Feel free to use this whole sentence, or even the individual phrases:

• On a rainy day…
• We have to wait to play.

“Rainy” and “wait” are in the middle of the phrases, just like “ai” comes in the middle of a syllable.

“Day” and “play” are at the end of each phrase, just like “ay” comes at the end of a syllable.

Application is Key for Long A Vowel Teams

As with any phonics skill, application is key. Sorting words, playing games and participating in targeted phonics activities are fantastic. However, it is not enough to practice words in isolation

Perhaps you give students an outlet to explain this spelling generalizations to one another. Allow them to articulate their understanding in their own words. 

Maybe you provide students with decodable texts where they can practice reading texts with long a vowel teams, where they pay close attention to the positioning of each vowel team (a highlighter would be a great tool here).

It may be that you even give students an opportunity to do some interactive writing or editing with you, where you share in the pen in correctly spelling words with long a vowel teams in a piece.

Final Thoughts

All in all, it’s encouraging to know that English, for the most part, is fairly regular. Knowing, and internalizing spelling generalizations (like this one) builds your teacher capacity for not only the way you teach students how to “crack the code”, but also the way you prompt students at times of difficulty. 

I hope you found value in this post. Let me know if you have any unique ways you teach this generalization to your students. I’d love to hear from you!

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