Introduction to teaching syllable types transcript
Elaine Stanley:
There are six different syllable types that can occur in words. They can occur in different combinations in words, but these are the six types listed here, and you can see some example words there for each one. Every word students read or spell will have at least one syllable, and every syllable will have at least one vowel.
- We can see there we've got closed syllables, and this is where a vowel will make its short sound because it's followed by one or more consonants in a syllable.
- We've got open syllables where a vowel is at the end of a syllable, so it will make its long sound because it isn't followed by any consonants.
- We have vowel-consonant-e syllables, which is your split digraph or silent e syllable.
- Vowel teams where vowels work in pairs or in teams to make a vowel sound.
- R-controlled syllables, that's where a vowel is or vowels are followed by an r, and they work together within a syllable.
- We've got consonant-le syllables.
The processes for syllable division are designed to help students split words into syllables to make them more manageable for reading and spelling. But it also helps them to know which sound a vowel or vowels will make within a particular syllable.
Today we are going to focus on these three syllable types [closed syllables; open syllables; consonant-le syllables] because there is an actual process involved in how you split words according to these syllable types, which we'll demonstrate for you.
The first thing students need to know and be able to do before studying syllable types is recognise short and long vowel sounds in words. This is an activity you can do in your classroom and students love this one, and it really helps them to identify and distinguish between those short and long vowel sounds.
We've got our two little dogs. We've got Jack, who's a short dog, so he represents the short vowel sounds and in his name we can hear a short vowel sound, /j/-/a/-/k/, so short sound. And we've got Jake, who's a long dog, so he represents the long vowel sound. In his name we can hear a long vowel sound, /j/-/ā/-/k/. Students listen to words and then they decide who gets a bone each time, depending on the vowel sound. Kerrie's going to help us today.
Teacher:
Kerrie, our first word is ‘bat’. Can you tell me the sounds you can hear in ‘bat’?
Student:
Okay, there's /b/-/a/-/t/.
Teacher:
Can you show me where the vowel sound is?
Student:
The middle.
Teacher:
Okay. And is it a short sound or a long sound?
Student:
Short.
Teacher:
Short. Who's going to get the bone today?
Student:
Jack.
Teacher:
Jack is going to get a bone because we've got a short sound. Then he gets a bone. This is our next word, ‘bike’. Can you tell me the sounds you can hear in ‘bike’?
Student:
/b/-/ī/-/ke/.
Teacher:
And can you show me where the vowel sound is?
Student:
The ‘i’.
Teacher:
Is that a long sound or a short sound this time?
Student:
Long sound, /ī/.
Teacher:
All right. Who's going to get the bone?
Student:
Jake.
Teacher:
Jake, this time. All right, we'll do one more. This is our next word, ‘phone’. Can you tell me the sound?
Student:
/f/-/ō/-/n/.
Teacher:
And show me where your vowel sound is? Is it a short sound or a long sound this time?
Student:
Long sound, /ō/.
Teacher:
Who gets the bone?
Student:
Jake.
Elaine Stanley:
Okay. Students love seeing who gets the most bones each time. This is a really good activity to do just as a warm-up at the beginning of the lesson. Or if you've got a bit of spare time during the day, students love doing this one. It's a really good way for them to be able to distinguish those vowel sounds, but also they need to be able to name them, so they need to be able to tell you the short sound is /a/, and the long sound is /ā/, for example.