Long vowel sound spelling patterns are quite difficult for students to learn.  First they must understand that more than one letter can be used to represent one sound and then learn the various ways that the sound can be represented in print.  For example, there are 4 common ways the sound /a/ can be spelled: “a” as in “acorn”, “a_e”  as in “gate”, “ai” as in “rain” and “ay” as in “day”.  Students must also learn when to use the spelling pattern for each sound.  For example, the “ay” spelling pattern for the /a/ sound most often occurs at the end of words while the “ai” spelling pattern never occurs at the beginning or end of words.  Whoa! kind of