Almost all early readers’ books have plenty of CVC words. There is actually never a scarcity of them. As soon as the first 3 letter sounds are introduced (after working on 2 letter words), the next step is to work on 3 letter words i.e CVC words. Though, there is no particular rule as far as introducing these words but I have personally found that introducing them in a particular fashion makes the blending part easy and hence builds their confidence.
Letter sounds /s, m, n, r, f, l, v, z/ are “continuous Sounds”. Continuous sounds are the elongated sounds, as in which don’t come to a stop unless you make that happen.;-)
While “Stop Sounds” are the ones where, when you say them, you feel a puff of air on your palm (when placed in front). These sounds are /b, c, d, g, h, p, t, k, j, w, x, y/
So now the secret is that kids will find more success if you start with CVC words which have continuous sounds at the beginning and stop sounds at the end like “mat”. This helps kids quickly stop blending at that final stop sound. And also, blending the first continuous sound with the vowel becomes easy as they glide into each other.
As kids become proficient with blending continuous sounds, move onto blending stop sounds at the beginning of words, like cat. When blending with stop sounds at the beginning of the word, it is often helpful to prompt kids to blend the stop sound with the continuous sound next to it. For instance in cat, the ca would be blended together.
Be sure that when you (or kids) are saying the continuous sounds, elongate/drag the continuous sounds. Overemphasise them. You want students to hear all the sounds in the word.
Give this bit a try and let us know how did it go!
Comments