Teaching reading is my favorite, so I have several tools that I find helpful when my students are ready to learn how to read CVC words! Once your students have a strong understanding of words, are already identifying letter sounds, and can blend the sounds together, they are ready to start reading!
You will find some students pick it up really quickly, while other students find it more difficult to conceptualize this skill, and need a little bit of extra help and activities to practice with throughout the year. In an earlier post, I shared fun ways to introduce CVC words and 6 fun ways to practice them. Now I will share some ideas to help your students learn how to READ CVC words!
Read and Reveal Word Cards
One of the most effective literacy activities we implement with our beginning readers is CVC read and reveal cards. These cards have been SUPER successful in helping our students learn to read! They can be placed in word work bins or at tables for students to work on independently. You can also incorporate them in your small groups to help one on one.
To use these cards, clip the card closed so the students can’t see the picture. They will touch and say each sound in the word, then blend the sounds together, following the arrow on the card. Once they blend all three sounds together to form a word, they reveal the image to see if they are correct. The students feel so successful when they reveal the picture to see that they read the word correctly and independently!
Read and Match CVC Cards
This activity is a great word work station for students working in groups. The kids can lay the images and word cards out in the middle of a table or on the floor and work together to read short vowel words and match the pictures. With this activity, students can use their detective skills to find the words after identifying the picture or they can read the word and then search for the picture.
I like to print these CVC Matching Cards on two different colors of paper so students can easily determine the images from the words. It makes them easier to find while they are working. If you prefer to have students working independently, you can print multiple sets of the cards or rotate students through different CVC tasks throughout the week.
Word Family Books
I don’t know what it is, but kids LOVE making their own books. They get so excited to fold, color, and finish a mini booklet and take it home. You can use these Word Family Books to practice CVC words during small group guided reading times or students can complete them independently.
Each book focuses on a specific word family, so you can print any you are currently practicing. Students read the CVC words, find the words that are a part of the word family, and read simple sentences to practice the words in context. These mini books provide plenty of practice with reading short vowel CVC words, and kids love them!
Reading Fluency Passages
If you have small groups that are ready to start reading short stories that incorporate CVC words, you will enjoy these short Reading Fluency Passages. The passages begin with five CVC words, all from the same word family. Students read the words and the passage 3 times, coloring a star after each pass-through. Then, the passage invites students to rewrite their favorite sentence and illustrate that sentence.
Building & Writing CVC words
Some students can read CVC words, but struggle to encode, or spell the words when prompted. Included with the Read and Reveal CVC cards, these Write and Reveal cards allow your students to map the sounds they hear in each word.
Students name the picture and identify all three sounds they hear. Then they can use their orthographic knowledge to write or build the word, unclip the card, and check their work! The multi sensory approach to building words is really helpful to our emerging readers.
I loved creating and using these fun CVC word activities. They have been a huge hit in my classroom, building strong, successful readers! You can find all of these CVC activities linked above, and they are also all included in my CVC mega bundle! Save over 30% on each resource with this bundle!
