Should I Teach Syllable Segmenting?

Can you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Can your students? 

In all seriousness, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn't the most functional word to spell – but as students progress academically, they do need to be able to break down long words for reading and spelling.

The key to reading and spelling long words is understanding syllables.

⁠⁠Syllables act as a bridge between the whole word and the phonemes (sound level) within the word. They provide a chunking strategy that supports working memory.

For example, if I asked you to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, you might pause. That is a lot of phonemes to sound out and write down! However, if I ask you to spell each of the fourteen syllables separately, this task becomes infinitely easier.

Most of the time, our students won’t need to syllabicate fourteen syllable words. They will, however, need to break down words with multiple syllables in order to read and spell them. 

It is important to be able to break words into syllables because each syllable type has its own rules that we rely on to know what the vowel in the word is going to say and how to spell the words.

For example…

Crab - this has one syllable (we only hear one vowel). Since this is a closed syllable, the vowel (the ‘a’) makes its short sound. However, in the word “crabby” we have two syllables. The first (crab) has the same closed syllable rule mentioned a second ago. The second syllable in this word (by) is an open syllable (‘y’ is acting as a vowel at the end of the syllable) and we know that ‘y’ at the end of a multisyllabic word will say /E/ like in “baby.” In supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, we use “su” at the beginning instead of “sue, soo, sou, sui, or sew” because it is an open syllable.

Helping students develop a sensitivity to syllables will help them grow into stronger readers and spellers.

So…how do we teach syllable segmenting?

When working with students…

…we teach them that a syllable is a word, or a part of a word, with one vowel sound and there are 6 different types of syllables.

For some, this comes pretty naturally. For others, this requires repetition and practice. 

You can add segmenting into your regular PA drill (we like to complete segmenting tasks as a brain "warm-up" prior to spelling). We also like to use our students' spelling words.  For each word, we'll have students segment it before they spell it. 

Now, as we will mention again and again, these activities should be quick. This should not be a focus for an entire lesson as there are definitely additional valuable skills you need to make sure to fit in. If you're interested in learning more about how to fit it all in - you can check out our blog >>here<<.

To grab syllable segmenting (and hundreds of other literacy resources), check out our 5-Core Components of Literacy Resource Library.