CVC Words Practice in Kindergarten

Short vowel CVC words are the cornerstone of kindergarten reading instruction. Our big goal by the end of the year is that our students can segment and blend CVC words. All of their reading in the future grades hinges on their ability to do this skill. It’s much harder to decode multisyllabic words in second grade when breaking down a CVC word in kindergarten was never mastered.

Today I have three of my favorite CVC decoding strategies to share with you! You can take any of these and start implementing them in your classroom tomorrow!

Chop & Write CVC Words

This is one of my favorite methods for teaching CVC decoding. Students “chop” the word apart and isolate each sound. You can have students even do a ninja hand chop motion each time they say a different sound in the word!

After they have orally isolated each sound, have them write the sounds they hear. This step is important because it creates that brain connection between spoken word and written word! 

For more advanced students, you can take it a step further and have them use the words they write to create sentences. Adding in that extra layer of comprehension by using the words in context is also a great way to help our students grow!

Using Manipualtives 

For more tactile learners, I love to use different colored erasers, pom-poms, or other small manipulatives. Students build words by using the tools to represent the sounds they hear. For example, the word ‘cat’ may have two blue pom-poms and one pink pom-pom in the middle. The blue pom-poms can represent consonant sounds, while the pink pom-pom can be the vowel. 

Have students tap the manipulatives and say each sound, then read the word together. You can use a dry erase board to have them write the sounds so they can see it in word form

Matching CVC Words and Pictures 

Visual learners greatly benefit from using pictures to represent words. So, a great activity is matching words and pictures. Have separate sets of words written on index cards, along with some printed pictures of the words. 

Pull one picture card from a stack and have students say the word, and isolate the sounds. Once they can name each sound, have the students find the matching word on a card! 

These three CVC decoding activities will engage your students and help their reading skills grow this year! If you want some ready-made materials for CVC segmenting and blending, I have some digital and printable activities here! These heavily feature in my ‘chop and write’ strategy that I mentioned earlier in this post. Your students will love it!

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