The most important thing we can do during beginning decoding & spelling instruction is make sure that students understand that we make individual SOUNDS when we speak. And that these sounds, like the "long a" sound for example, can be spelled in a couple of different ways.
 
Please enjoy these (FREE) 10 board games that focus on some of the basic ways we spell the long a sound: "a", "a_e", "ai", and "ay".
 
NOTE: It is so helpful to encourage children to make up a sentence after decoding the word so that they can learn more about vocabulary, syntax, and morphology (e.g., how do we change "wait" to "waited"? (answer: "add -ed") What sound does the "-ed" make at the end of waited? (answer: /id/). But how do we spell it? (answer: "ed").