Spelling the 'ay' sound with 'a', 'eigh' or 'ey' | English

Starter quiz

Choose the words that contain the 'ay' phoneme.
- pancake ✓
- play ✓
- treat
- most
- grey ✓
Choose the words that rhyme with the word 'cake'.
- lakes
- lake ✓
- joke
- plate
- make ✓
Choose the words that contain the root word 'train'.
- rain
- training ✓
- trained ✓
- pain
- trains ✓
Match the graphemes to where they commonly appear in a word.
- 'ay'
  
  ⇔
  
  the end ✓
- 'a-e'
  
  ⇔
  
  the last but one phoneme ✓
- 'ai'
  
  ⇔
  
  the middle ✓
Correct the spelling in bold in the following sentence: 'I ate a delicious pancayk'.
- 'pancake' ✓
What is the root word in the word 'maker'?
- 'make' ✓

Choose the words which contain an 'ay' phoneme.
- eight ✓
- wasp
- stable ✓
- money
- prey ✓
Match the grapheme that make the 'ay' sound to where they most commonly appear in a word.
- 'eigh'
  
  ⇔
  
  anywhere ✓
- 'ey'
  
  ⇔
  
  at the end ✓
- 'a'
  
  ⇔
  
  at the beginning or the middle ✓
Choose the correct spelling of the word in bold in the following sentence: 'There was a slai pulled by reindeer in the sky.'
- sleigh ✓
- slay
- sliegh
Match the key words to their definitions.
- phoneme
  
  ⇔
  
  the smallest unit of sound in a word ✓
- grapheme
  
  ⇔
  
  the written representation of a phoneme ✓
- word family
  
  ⇔
  
  a group of words common in pattern or meaning ✓
Select the words that are part of the same word family.
- eight ✓
- eighteen ✓
- weight
- eighty ✓
- seventeen
Correct the spelling in bold in the following sentence: 'He was wearing an aipron whilst cooking.'
- aypron
- eighpron
- apron ✓
- eypron

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Common spellings for the 'ay' phoneme are 'ay', 'a-e' and 'ai'.
Alternative and rare spellings for the 'ay' phoneme are 'a', 'eigh' and 'ey'.
Suffixes that have been added may change the spelling of a word, so finding the root word can be a useful strategy.
Finding rhyming words helps to find the correct spelling, such as 'weigh' and 'sleigh' and 'able' and 'stable'.
Words in word families often have similar spellings.

Pupils may start using these spellings in place of the most common spellings.

Emphasise that 'ay', 'ai' and 'a-e' are the most common spellings and tell pupils to try those out first.

Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound
Grapheme - the letter or group of letters that represent a sound
Rare - rare spellings are spellings which appear less frequently
Word family - a group of words common in feature, pattern or meaning
Root word - the base word from which other words are formed often by adding prefixes or suffixes