Developing Phonological Awareness Through Syllabification

Did you know that early phonological awareness is strongly linked to later success in reading and writing?

One key aspect of phonological awareness is the ability to hear and identify distinct syllables in words. Every syllable within a word will contain a vowel sound. Activities such as clapping out a word can be helpful when asking students to break a word into syllables, or to count how many syllables a word contains.

This set of five worksheets has been designed to help your students practice this fundamental skill. Students are required to read the word, then choose the correct number of syllables from the options provided.

Tips for Extension and Support

A team of dedicated, experienced educators created this resource to support your phonics instruction. If you have a mixture of above and below-level learners, check out these suggestions for keeping students on track with the concepts:

🆘 Support Struggling Students

If your students are having trouble identifying how many syllables there are in each word, show them how to clap it out. This makes sounding out words fun (they love to make noise). Plus, students engage multiple senses while working on their phonological awareness.

➕ Challenge Fast Finishers

Encourage fast finishers to go back to each word and indicate the syllable breaks, e.g. he/li/cop/ter. They could colour-code these according to syllable type. (Tip: For more information about syllable types, refer to this great set of informative syllable types posters!)

Download, Print and Go!

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