2. When to Teach Closed Syllables

Once you have taught all of the letters of the alphabet and have explicitly practiced with short vowel sounds, you can teach your students about closed syllables.

Grade Level

We begin teaching students about closed syllables in kindergarten. We continue to work with closed syllables in both one-syllable and multisyllabic words as students progress through the grades. If you have older students that struggle with short vowel sounds, it’s critical that you spend time working with those sounds and explicitly teach about closed syllables so that they can recognize when the vowel will be short. 

Prerequisite Skills

Before learning about closed syllables, students should:

1. Know the terms consonant and vowel
2. Be able to identify letters that are consonants and letters that are vowels
3. Know the sounds for the consonants and the short vowels
4. Have a basic understanding of what a syllable is

Here’s a reminder of where you are on our phonics continuum — what you have taught and what’s coming up. This is not the only way to do things, and many programs will teach skills in a different order. That’s OK, as long as students learn all the skills.