AW (saw) Sound Word List
The /aw/ sound is the nineteenth vowel sound in the OnTrack Reading curriculum and is in a category all its own. Indeed, it might not even be a distinct sound in your region.
Of the 7,000 words in the database constructed from a popular children’s dictionary, 51 of them are one-syllable words in which the vowel sound is /aw/. There are four different spellings, "aw" (claw), "au" (sauce), "augh" (taught), and "ough" (thought).
The /aw/ sound is difficult to deal with in a curriculum because in some regions it’s quite distinct from the /o/ sound in hot and in others it’s not. The choice made here is to force words where /aw/ is spelled with the letter "a" into the /o/ list (hot, want, wall, was) for spelling purposes, while establishing an /aw/ list for the spellings "aw", "au", "augh", and "ough". In regions where there is no distinction between the /o/ and /aw/ sounds, the spellings on this page should be taught as spelling alternatives for the /o/ sound, rather than as a different vowel sound.
