You Can Master How to Teach Letter Sounds
I think quite a bit about how to better teach letter sounds in kindergarten. At the end of any school year, I previously had too many students that still did no know all of
Why is Learning Letter Sounds Important?
CVC words are simply words that have a consonant vowel consonant pattern. Examples of CVC words would be "cat", "net", "wig", "log", and "sun".
One of the important concepts in learning to read CVC words is the understanding that a vowel between two consonants is usually a short vowel sound.
Segmenting
Segmenting words is breaking a word into its separate sounds.
The easiest way to understand this concept and/or explain it to students is to think of a word you want to write down and spell. In order to spell that word you can say each sound in the word and write down each sound in order. You are taking apart the word in order to spell it sound by sound.
Blending
Blending is putting sounds together to form a word.
The first step in blending is is to say a word orally to students by saying one sound at a time and have them tell you the word. I like to tell students that they are guessing my word! It makes it fun, but they are not really guessing. They should be putting the sounds together to say the word. Students should be able to do this orally before they learn to look at a word and blend.
That next step of looking at a word in text and blending requires letter identification and letter-sound correspondence knowledge. It also requires that students have been taught that a vowel between two consonants makes its short sound and they need to know what that short sound is, compared to the long sound.
Segmenting and Blending
Segmenting and blending are two sides to the same coin. They are complimentary activities. Once students can do each activity separately, it can be fun and easy to combine the two tasks.
Give students a picture card and letter cards to build the word in the picture.
It is important to teach the students the task in a very explicit and direct way.
First, state the name of the picture. There shouldn't be any confusion on what the picture is and what word they are going to build. In this example, the picture is a "log". Tell the student to say the word "log".
Then, have the student say the sounds in the word "log", /lll/ /ooo/ /g/. Be very careful that you and the student are not distorting the /g/ sound by adding an /uh/ to the end /guh/.
The student can then build the word "log" with the letter cards, segmenting the word again as needed to find the sounds in order.
CVC Words Segmenting and Blending Resource
If you are interested in a done for you activity on CVC Words Segmenting and Blending, check out the product below from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. The students I work with LOVE this activity!
The CVC Words Segmenting and Blending Work Boards included in this resource make it an engaging teaching and learning tool.
This resource includes four CVC Words for each short vowel sound. It also includes a picture card to match:
Short a words: fan, map, sad, ant, bag
Short e words: leg, net, Rex, web, bed
Short i words: wig, pig, bib, fin, kid
Short o words: mop, fox, log, mom, pot
Short u words: mud, sun, mug, tub, bug
There is a work board for working with one, two, three, or four words at a time. Each board is in color and black and white. Also included is a direct instruction, scripted mini-lesson.
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