Short Vowel Doubled Consonants

Short Vowel Doubles

Short Vowel Doubles are consonants that are doubled after short vowels in English. They are LL, ZZ, SS, FF & CK. The digraph CH couldn't be written twice, so they put a TCH instead. The short vowel doubles give us words like- ‘shell’, ‘jazz’ & ‘stitch’.

One explanation of why English has these doubles is that they are short or quiet sounds that would be easily missed by scribes if they weren’t written twice.

Children with poor visual memory need to be explicitly taught when to use short vowel doubles. The Witch’s Spell Story can be used as an anchor while they consolidate which consonants are doubled. 

Teaching Short Vowel Doubles- Extracts from DyslexicLogic Literacy Support Programme:

Teaching Resources

This word pack contains a mix of short vowel doubles and long vowel words which don’t take a doubled final consonant. This pack contains is designed to be printed double-sided and can be used to create games focused on short vowel doubles.