8. For Students Who Need Additional Support with Closed Syllables

For students who are struggling with this skill, there are three instructional options you can use to provide additional support: 

1. Add Time and Repetitions
Consider bumping up the amount of time for instruction, slowing the pace of instruction, and increasing practice time. 

2. Change Your Instruction
If the strategies you've been using aren't delivering results, you could try another instructional approach. 

3. Change Your Student Groupings
If students have been practicing only in whole group, try small-group instruction. If students are practicing in a small group and are falling behind most kids, consider one-on-one practice. Most students will need numerous individual practice opportunities with prompt corrective feedback to master a skill.

For more tips on helping English Learners with vowel sounds, see this piece by Dr. Claude Goldenberg in our skill explainer about short vowels.

To learn more about supporting students with learning disabilities including dyslexia during short vowels instruction, see this piece by Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling.

When teaching closed syllables, as with all literacy instruction for English learners, the supports needed will depend on the students' literacy proficiency in their home language, and their literacy and oral language proficiency in English.

In this video, reading consultant Antonio Fierro of the Barksdale Reading Institute demonstrates a teaching strategy called Build-a-Word. Students can use it to practice recognizing the connection between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes).

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan models decoding practice with closed syllables and integrates additional skills and features such as fluency, rhyme, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax.

This video is an excerpt from her Reading Universe presentation, Teaching English Learners: What Every Educator Should Know.