OE

Long o at the end of a small set of words — toe, hoe, doe, goes. Rare, but the words are common.

Vowel teams

oe TEAM_OE_01

Word-family rule · Medium reliability · Rare · Intermediate · Reading

• /əʊ/ long o: toe, hoe, goes
• /uː/ oo sound: shoe, canoe

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 9: Vowel Teams (Long)

Child explanation

Toe, hoe and goes end in oe and say /əʊ/. Shoe is the odd one — it says /uː/.

The rule

Oe represents long o at the end of a small closed set of words. Shoe and canoe are the two that say /uː/ instead.

What is really going on

A small, closed set. Worth teaching because the members are frequent, not because the pattern is productive. In medial position oe usually belongs to a different morpheme or is a Greek borrowing (amoeba, phoenix).

Position in the word

• End of a word — Effectively the only position. For example: toe, hoe, doe, goes.

Examples

Easy examples

toe, hoe, doe, goes, foe

More examples

woe, throes, oboe, tiptoe, heroes, potatoes, tomatoes

Advanced examples

shoe, canoe

Exceptions

• oe as /uː/: shoe, canoe. Two borrowed words.

Contrast pairs

• toe versus tow — Two spellings, one sound — homophones.
• goes versus does — Same four-letter shape, completely different words.

Teacher note

Teach as a small word family rather than a grapheme rule, and pair it with the -oes plural pattern in heroes, potatoes and tomatoes, which is where children meet it most often.

Related rules

• OA — oa — Long o inside a word. Highly reliable, and like ai it does not end English words — ow does that.
• OW and its two sounds — ow — /əʊ/ in snow and /aʊ/ in cow, with roughly even odds and no spelling clue. A genuine coin toss that needs flexing, not a rule.
• The -s and -es ending — -s / -es — Three sounds — /s/, /z/ and /ɪz/ — and the sound before the ending decides which. Children produce all three correctly in speech before anyone teaches them.

• Previous in Vowel teams: OA — oa — Long o inside a word. Highly reliable, and like ai it does not end English words — ow does that.
• Next in Vowel teams: OO and its two sounds — oo — /uː/ in moon and /ʊ/ in book. Roughly three to one in favour of moon, with no spelling clue — but a strong clue in the following consonant.
• All reading rules

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