Middle Sounds Resources

If you have already taught your children how words begin and end, it’s time to make sure they can approach the whole word with confidence. Teaching middle sounds is equally as important as everything else related to sounding out new words, from understanding vowels to learning new words in their entirety. When your child or children need a little downtime, Education.com’s worksheets below will keep them entertained and learning.

When teaching students to read, we sometimes have them start with the beginning sounds of words, which are most commonly the phonetic sound of the letter, then move on to the ends of the words. The sounds in the middle we sometimes deal with last.
For that reason, it’s sometimes easiest to start with consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words. In this case, the middle vowel will almost always be short. For example, car, fox, and fun. The resources provided by Education.com above can help students quickly identify the middle sound of the words in a fun way.
Doubled vowel digraphs are easily recognizable for students, and could be a good place to start when moving beyond the CVC words. A vowel digraph is when a two vowels are paired together to make a single sound. A doubled vowel digraph is when both vowels are the same as in feet, book, or moon.
When the two vowels aren’t the same, their sound can be slightly more complicated. The majority of the time, the resulting sound will be the long vowel sound of the first of the two vowels. Some examples of this are beneath and boat. Some digraphs, however, make a new sounds. When you put ou together, you get an ow sounds like in pout and mouth. Depending on context, some digraphs make multiple sounds. For example, ‘ea’ could make the long vowel sound as in read or the short vowel sound as in read.