4. Lesson Plans for Teaching Closed Syllables

Lesson Plans for Closed Syllables (Two Days)

This two-day lesson plan shows you how to introduce and practice closed syllables with students.

Lesson Plan Checklist: How to Teach a Syllable Type

This is a template that can be used to create your own lesson plans for teaching a syllable type.

Lesson Plan for Mixed Short Vowels

This lesson plan includes warm-up phonemic awareness activities and all the steps needed to reinforce the five short vowel sounds. It's a good resource for kindergarten teachers or anyone focusing on short vowels with early readers.

Short Vowels Word List

Our word lists can help you plan for teaching short vowels. Use them in your reading, spelling, and fluency building lessons and activities.

Teacher Tip: Beware Words That Are Exceptions

It is important that we initially only use words that are true closed syllables, where the vowel does represent the short sound. There are some syllables that are closed-syllable exceptions. In these syllables, there is one vowel followed by at least one consonant and the vowel should represent the short sound but it does not. For example, find, most, and poll, are all exceptions.

Another important note is that when a vowel is followed by an 'r’ the vowel looks closed but is actually an r-controlled syllable. Do not use r-controlled words in your initial closed-syllable lessons. Save them until students have mastered r-controlled vowels.