Short or Long? Reading Word Pairs

Use the silent e clue to decide between short and long vowels.

Now that you know two vowel patterns, you can decide which to use. Look at the end of the word. No silent e? Try short. Silent e? Try long. Practice with pairs: 'hat / hate', 'kit / kite', 'not / note', 'cut / cute', 'tap / tape'.

Read this sentence: 'I hid my kite under the pine. ' 'Hid' has no e, so the i is short. 'Kite' and 'pine' end in e, so the i is long. Checking the end first saves you from guessing.

• 1No silent e: try the short sound.
• 2Silent e: try the long sound.
• 3Check the end of the word first.