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Practicing how to blend consonant-vowel-consonant sounds together to read three-letter words.
Did you know that you can unlock hundreds of secret words just by knowing three little sounds? It is like having a magic key to a treasure chest of stories!
A CVC word is a word made of three parts: a Consonant, a Vowel, and another Consonant. Think of it like a sandwich! The consonants are the bread on the outside, and the vowel is the yummy filling in the middle. In the word cat, the letter 'c' and 't' are the bread, and the 'a' is the filling. Every CVC word has exactly sounds. Most of the time, the vowel in the middle makes its short sound, like 'a' in apple or 'i' in itch. When we put these sounds together, we are blending.
Follow these steps to read the word: 1. Look at the first letter 'c' and say its sound: /k/. 2. Look at the middle letter 'a' and say its sound: /a/. 3. Look at the last letter 't' and say its sound: /t/. 4. Slide your finger under the letters and say them faster: /k/-/a/-/t/. 5. Say it all at once: Cat!
Quick Check
In a CVC word, where do you usually find the vowel?
Answer
The vowel is always in the middle.
To write a word, we have to do the opposite of blending. We use segmenting. This means we take a whole word and stretch it out like a rubber band to hear every single sound. Imagine you are pulling a piece of bubblegum. If you say the word pig, you pull it slowly to hear /p/, then /i/, and finally /g/. Once you hear all sounds, you can write the letters that match them. This helps us become great spellers!
Let's break down the word 'sun' to write it: 1. Say the whole word out loud: 'Sun'. 2. Punch the air for the first sound: /s/. Write 's'. 3. Touch your nose for the middle sound: /u/. Write 'u'. 4. Clap for the last sound: /n/. Write 'n'. 5. Look at your paper: You wrote sun!
Quick Check
If you stretch the word 'hop', what is the middle sound you hear?
Answer
The middle sound is /o/.
Once you can read one CVC word, you can read many more! By changing just the first letter, you create a word family. If you know how to read cat, you can change the /k/ to a /b/ to make bat, or a /h/ to make hat. The middle and the end stay the same. This is a fast way to learn dozens of words at once. It is like a rhyming game where only the 'start' sound changes while the 'filling' and the 'end bread' stay exactly the same.
Let's transform the word 'map' into 'mop': 1. Start with 'map': /m/ /a/ /p/. 2. Identify the middle sound: /a/. 3. Take away the /a/ and put an /o/ in its place. 4. Blend the new sounds: /m/ /o/ /p/. 5. You just turned a map into a mop!
Which of these is a CVC word?
What are the three sounds in the word 'bin'?
To read a word, you should blend the sounds together.
Review Tomorrow
Tomorrow morning, look around your room and try to find three things that are CVC words (like a 'bed', 'mat', or 'cup').
Practice Activity
Use magnetic letters or play-dough to build the 'at' family: cat, bat, hat, and mat.