These products target the big step from short vowel sounds to long vowel digraphs with lots of support and fun thrown in. SORT IT grew out of the days when I needed to help students who needed more and weren't quite 'getting it' as easily as others, while DONKEY added the fun for everyone. These days I illustrate the cards and I know the maximum amount of support is there and students of all abilities will benefit.

SORT IT: There are 45 words with long vowel digraphs in four formats:

• Picture and word
• Picture and word but the vowel digraph is missing
• Picture Only
• Word Only

You can use these in so many ways that I wouldn't be surprised if you came up with a unique way to suit the needs of students in your class. I have always started with the Picture+Word cards, especially if I have had ESL students. When students know what the word means you can start to focus on phonemics and decoding. Matching, sorting or writing follows.

The words I have used are:

ai: jail, nail, snail, raise, aim, paint, sail, tail, mail

ea: beads, seal, jeans, leaf, cream, beach, team, cheat, east

ee: jeep, feet, feed, wheel, sneeze, sleep, sweep, teeth, queen

ie: tie, pie, lie

oa: coat, soap, boat, float, goat, toast, roast, foam, road

ue: blue, glue, clue, fuel, duel, cue

DONKEY is a card game for all ages. It is my popular game. It extends phonemic awareness into rhyme and, with the illustrated cards, doubles as an intervention resource prior to playing.

The words I have used are:

Set 1 (CVVC Only): pain. rain, mail, tail, rail, sail, fail, jail, wait, bait, laid, paid, bean, mean, meat, seat, neat, beat, read, lead, leak, beak, team, seam, heap, leap, jeep, deep, keep, peep, seen, been, need, weed, seed, feed, coat, boat, road, toad, tied, died, duel, fuel

Set 2: green, queen, brain, grain, train, drain, plain, chain, raise, praise, sprain, strain, please, tease, beast, least, reach,, beach, peach, teach, sneak, speak, streak, creak, cream, steam, dried, spied, tried, fried, coach, roach, toast, roast, float, throat, bruise, cruise, true, blue, glue, clue, value, statue

The posters are included as extra support and can be used for individuals, groups or as classroom display.