A small group of common English words spell the /uː/ sound with a plain 'o' — 'do', 'to', 'who', 'two', 'move'. They look like they should rhyme with 'go' or 'no', but they don't. This pack works the words through segmenting and blending, building each one sound by sound, with games and activities for using the words once they've been built.
Where this sound-spelling comes from in English
The /uː/ sound is normally spelled 'oo', 'ew', 'u_e', or 'ue'. The plain 'o' spelling is unusual, and there's a reason for it. Most of these words — 'do', 'to', 'who', 'move', 'prove' — were pronounced with a long /oː/ in Middle English, closer to the modern 'o' in 'go'. During the Great Vowel Shift, between roughly 1400 and 1700, that long /oː/ raised further to /uː/. The spelling didn't follow. A handful of words ended up with an 'o' on the page and a /uː/ in the mouth, and they've stayed that way. 'Shoe' and 'tomb' have a slightly different history — 'shoe' from Old English 'sċōh', 'tomb' borrowed from Old French 'tombe' — but they ended up in the same group. These are high-frequency words that turn up early in a child's reading, which makes the spelling pattern worth teaching explicitly rather than leaving it to be picked up.
What's included
• Two segmenting and blending grids, covering all fourteen words ('do', 'who', 'move', 'prove', 'lose', 'shoe', 'to', 'into', 'two', 'tomb', 'womb', 'whom', 'improve', 'undo'), with columns for segmenting, building the word, writing it in a sentence, reading it, and practising the spelling
• Two pages of activity ideas across five categories: Create & Make (magnetic letters, rainbow writing, playdough, chalk and water), Segment & Blend Practice (phoneme tap, robot talk, snap and stretch, air writing), Sentence Work (oral creation, silly sentences, story starters, dictation), Games & Memory (word bingo, memory match, roll and write, hidden word hunts, Jenga), and Visual and Auditory Links (sound buttons, colour-coded morphemes, echo reading, draw the word)
Who it's for
Designed first for tutoring students, but they suit a wider range:
• Children consolidating phonics in Key Stage 1 or 2, particularly those still working through the more unusual sound-spellings
• Older learners (Key Stage 3 and beyond) who are still meeting these words as awkward exceptions and benefiting from explicit teaching
• Home-educated children working through phonics independently or alongside a parent
• Specialist tuition students, including those with dyslexia or poor working memory
• Children curious about why English spells things the way it does
• Parents working alongside their children
• Adults brushing up their own spelling, or studying alongside a child
This isn't designed for early readers still working on letter-sound basics. The activities assume the learner can already read CVC and short consonant-blend words like 'shop', 'them', and 'fish' confidently, and is ready to work on producing words letter by letter, not just reading them.
Why this exists
Reading a word and spelling it are different jobs. A child can read 'shoe' on a card and still get stuck when they try to write it, because spelling production needs the learner to retrieve every grapheme in order without the page giving any of it away. These grids slow the production work down. The learner segments each word into sounds, builds it with playdough or magnetic letters, writes a sentence with it, then reads it back. The activity ideas exist because no child wants to do the same exercise fourteen times in a row. A learner working through 'tomb' on Tuesday and 'improve' on Thursday has a better chance of remembering both.
Originally created to support my students' learning once the lesson had ended.
If you'd like all four core /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' resources together, the /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' bundle saves £3 on the components.
The grid works well alongside the /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' Word Cards for decoding the same words, and the /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' Vocabulary Exploration Grids for meaning depth.
If your child also struggles with the /əʊ/ sound — the long 'o' in 'go', 'stone', 'toad' — you might find the /əʊ/ collection useful. The two sounds share the 'o' and 'oe' spellings, which is part of what makes them confusing.
Available now as a PDF download.
Licence
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
A small group of common English words spell the /uː/ sound with a plain 'o' — 'do', 'to', 'who', 'two', 'move'. They look like they should rhyme with 'go' or 'no', but they don't. This pack works the words through segmenting and blending, building each one sound by sound, with games and activities for using the words once they've been built.
Where this sound-spelling comes from in English
The /uː/ sound is normally spelled 'oo', 'ew', 'u_e', or 'ue'. The plain 'o' spelling is unusual, and there's a reason for it. Most of these words — 'do', 'to', 'who', 'move', 'prove' — were pronounced with a long /oː/ in Middle English, closer to the modern 'o' in 'go'. During the Great Vowel Shift, between roughly 1400 and 1700, that long /oː/ raised further to /uː/. The spelling didn't follow. A handful of words ended up with an 'o' on the page and a /uː/ in the mouth, and they've stayed that way. 'Shoe' and 'tomb' have a slightly different history — 'shoe' from Old English 'sċōh', 'tomb' borrowed from Old French 'tombe' — but they ended up in the same group. These are high-frequency words that turn up early in a child's reading, which makes the spelling pattern worth teaching explicitly rather than leaving it to be picked up.
What's included
• Two segmenting and blending grids, covering all fourteen words ('do', 'who', 'move', 'prove', 'lose', 'shoe', 'to', 'into', 'two', 'tomb', 'womb', 'whom', 'improve', 'undo'), with columns for segmenting, building the word, writing it in a sentence, reading it, and practising the spelling
• Two pages of activity ideas across five categories: Create & Make (magnetic letters, rainbow writing, playdough, chalk and water), Segment & Blend Practice (phoneme tap, robot talk, snap and stretch, air writing), Sentence Work (oral creation, silly sentences, story starters, dictation), Games & Memory (word bingo, memory match, roll and write, hidden word hunts, Jenga), and Visual and Auditory Links (sound buttons, colour-coded morphemes, echo reading, draw the word)
Who it's for
Designed first for tutoring students, but they suit a wider range:
• Children consolidating phonics in Key Stage 1 or 2, particularly those still working through the more unusual sound-spellings
• Older learners (Key Stage 3 and beyond) who are still meeting these words as awkward exceptions and benefiting from explicit teaching
• Home-educated children working through phonics independently or alongside a parent
• Specialist tuition students, including those with dyslexia or poor working memory
• Children curious about why English spells things the way it does
• Parents working alongside their children
• Adults brushing up their own spelling, or studying alongside a child
This isn't designed for early readers still working on letter-sound basics. The activities assume the learner can already read CVC and short consonant-blend words like 'shop', 'them', and 'fish' confidently, and is ready to work on producing words letter by letter, not just reading them.
Why this exists
Reading a word and spelling it are different jobs. A child can read 'shoe' on a card and still get stuck when they try to write it, because spelling production needs the learner to retrieve every grapheme in order without the page giving any of it away. These grids slow the production work down. The learner segments each word into sounds, builds it with playdough or magnetic letters, writes a sentence with it, then reads it back. The activity ideas exist because no child wants to do the same exercise fourteen times in a row. A learner working through 'tomb' on Tuesday and 'improve' on Thursday has a better chance of remembering both.
Originally created to support my students' learning once the lesson had ended.
If you'd like all four core /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' resources together, the /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' bundle saves £3 on the components.
The grid works well alongside the /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' Word Cards for decoding the same words, and the /uː/ - 'o' 'oe' Vocabulary Exploration Grids for meaning depth.
If your child also struggles with the /əʊ/ sound — the long 'o' in 'go', 'stone', 'toad' — you might find the /əʊ/ collection useful. The two sounds share the 'o' and 'oe' spellings, which is part of what makes them confusing.
Available now as a PDF download.
Licence
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
