Expanding Phonemic Awareness with Syllable Types

Understanding how to break words into smaller chunks is a valuable skill when decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) unknown words. Knowing about syllable types can be of great benefit to our young learners!

This set of worksheets has been designed to help students practise breaking words into syllables and identifying the corresponding syllable type. The six syllable types are closed, open, magic (or silent) e, vowel team, r-controlled and consonant +le.

Students are required to:

• read the word
• break the word into syllables
• colour-code the syllables in the word according to syllable type
• write the word (broken into syllables) on the lines provided.

There are six different worksheets to work through. Answer sheets are also included.

Tips for Scaffolding and Extension

This syllables activity has been designed to help your students better understand syllable types. Should you need to support or extend students in your class, you may wish to try the following ideas: 

• Students who require support should complete the activity in a small group with targeted adult support. Discuss the phonemic characteristics of each syllable type to help reinforce these for the students.
• For students who require an extension, provide them with additional syllables activities to complete independently. Our Syllable Types Sorting Activity would be perfect for this purpose! 

Download the File Format That Best Suits You

Use the dropdown menu located on the Download button to select between the PDF or editable Google Slides version of this resource.

Because this resource includes an answer sheet, we recommend you print one copy of the entire file. Then, make photocopies of the blank worksheet for students to complete.

To save paper, why not project the activity onto a screen and work through it as a class? Have students take turns coming up to the board. Use coloured markers to colour-code the words according to syllable type.

This resource was created by Lisamarie Del Valle, a Teach Starter collaborator.