How To Go From Learning Letters to Reading CVC Words

In my teaching practice, one of the hardest parts of teaching children how to start reading is going from learning their letter sounds to blending letters into words. It can be very difficult for young children. There are so many cognitive tasks they must perform in order to read just one word! First they need to be able to focus on that first letter in the word and retrieve its sound.

When reading a CVC word, a child must be able to start with the first letter and retrieve its sound.

Next they need to identify the second letter's sound, and then the last letter.

In order to read the whole word, the child has to be able to go back to that first letter and blend all three letters together to read the word. By the time they've gone through all three letters, it's going to be hard for them to hold those letter sounds in their working memory. So, of course they may end up reading the word incorrectly. I've seen this happen over and over again with my students.

One way to help with working memory when reading CVC words is to teach your child successive blending. Basically, you would have your child sound out the first two letters and blend those together. Then add the third letter sound. Since they've already blended the first part, it's easier to add on the last sound. I would start teaching this strategy using CVC words that begin with continuous sounds (like s, m, r, l). Continuous sounds are easier to blend because you can stretch out the sounds so that they blend together more easily. Take a look at the video below to see how I would model successive blending to a student. Try modeling the strategy for them first, then have your child do it along with you. Once you've practiced together, have your child try it all on their own!

Try using this strategy to help your child learn how to sound out CVC words.

If using successive blending is still too difficult for your child, you may want to start out with blending VC words. VC (vowel-consonant) words only have two letters and are much easier to blend. Try building VC words with magnetic letters. Words like at, an, on, it, in, and up are good to start with. If your child is struggling to blend sounds, try stretching out the vowel sound slowly and then adding the consonant sound.

Try starting with VC words like at.

If your child is still having trouble blending sounds, try some phonemic awareness activities where you just blend or segment the sounds (no letters). You can practice this with your child using sound boxes and counters. One counter represents one sound. Have your child push a counter while saying a sound. Then slide your finger across to blend the sounds. You can also try tapping out the sounds in a word using your fingers. Phonemic awareness games can be fun! You can have your child guess the mystery word based on the sounds you tell them. You can have them draw a picture from a bag and tap the sounds in that word.

That's all for today's post! Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions about sounding out words or successive blending. I'm always happy to help!

If you're interested in a CVC word review game, check out my CVC word scavenger hunt here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/CVC-Phonics-Task-Cards-Scavenger-Hunt-Short-Vowels-Kindergarten-11700525

As always, hope these tips are helpful for you as you're teaching your child those fundamental early reading skills this summer. Have a wonderful week everyone!