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Closed Syllables

I'm back to discuss closed syllables!


To view my post outlining each syllable type click here.
To grab my free syllable types posters and syllable guide click here.

This post will explain closed syllables further and showcase some closed syllables activities available in my teacherspayteachers store. To visit my teacherspayteachers store click here.

To grab this poster free click here

Closed syllables have one vowel and the vowel is closed in my one or more consonants. Word that contain digraphs like duck, much, and fish are concerned closed syllables. Words that have ending consonant blends such as last, spring, and blend are also considered closed syllables. VC or VCC wrds such as an, and off are also considered closed syllable words.

I use the visual of a cage to remind my students that the vowel is closed in by a consonant letter. This visual also helps remind students that these are called closed syllables.

This is a visual example of one syllable words that are considered closed syllables.


This is a visual example of two syllable words that contain two closed syllables.

Here is another visual example of how these two syllable words are broken into individual syllables.


When I begin teaching a syllable type I want my students to understand the characteristics that define each syllable type.

I pass out magnifying glasses and encourage my students to be detectives when searching for closed syllables.
This activity is found in my closed syllable pack here

I created this freebie exclusively for my blog readers to practice differentiating between closed syllable words and other syllable types.
Click here to get this closed syllable sort for free! 

In order to reinforce characteristics for closed syllables I have my students complete this sorting activity. Students sort cards into piles of words that contain closed syllables and words that do not.




In addition to making sure my student can identify a closed syllable I want to make sure they can read closed syllable words.

I love matching activities like the one below because it is self checking if my students make a mistake their matches won't line up and they will make sure to go back and find out what went wrong.

I also love QR codes for the same reason! My students are able to self check their work, this builds their independence and my students are engaged by the technology.

I also want to increase my students ability to read and build words that contain multiple syllables. 
In this activity my students choose cards from envelopes and build two syllable words.


This activity allows students to read two syllable words in a game format. Students read words and add toppings to their pizzas as they read words.


I also created an assessment portion of pack which includes reading real and nonsense words.

My closed syllable pack includes 10 activities to practice identifying and decoding closed syllable words. View my pack and read the full description and reviews here.

What is your favorite way to teach closed syllables?

Syllables Made Simple

Is it just me or does teaching multisyllabic words make you sweat? Sometimes I think the longer the word the more my students guess when they are attempting to decode. I learned how to teach each individual syllable type when I was completing my master's degree in special education. Over the last few years I have found a lot of success explicitly teaching each syllable type, my general education teacher friends are my inspiration for this post since the love when I share my syllable knowledge with their classes each year!

This blog post is the first in my Syllables Made Simple series. In this post I will explain the difference between the six syllable types, the rules for each syllable type, examples of words in each syllable type, and how the mark each type of syllable.

I created this syllable guide as a reference to help you and your students differentiate between syllable types.


Once your students understand the syllable rules for each syllable type they will be able to split multisyllabic words into syllables and decode each individual syllable.

The first syllable I teach is the closed syllable. The closed syllable is a word with one vowel that is closed in by a consonant letter. Closed syllables have short vowels. CVC words such as jam, kid, and bus are closed syllables. Words that follow  a VC pattern such as, on, in, and as are also considered closed syllables. In a closed syllables the vowel can be closed in by one consonant letter such as cat or dog, or multiple consonant letters such as spill, drink or junk.

The visual I use to represent closed syllables is drawing a cage around the vowel, this represents that the vowel is closed in.
Some examples of multisyllabic words that contain two closed syllables are catnip, chipmunk, polish, pumpkin, relish, bathmat, cabin, and goblin. When splitting two multi syllabic words the words are mostly split in between consonant letters. For example, the two syllables in catnip are cat and nip, the two syllables in chipmunk are chip and munk. Sometimes splitting syllables between the consonant letters won't work relish is split rel and ish and polish is split pol and ish, The meaning of the word polish can change depending on how the syllable is divided. Split like pol and ish the word is made up of two closed syllables. When split into two closed syllables the word is polish as in I will polish my silverware, split like po lish the word becomes Polish as in I am from Polish descant. When split like Polish the word contains an open syllable- Po and a closed syllable-lish There are words like polish/ Polish that do come up during reading, at these times I encourage my students to try the words both ways- then ask themselves is there a word that makes sense?

The next syllable type I teach is the open syllable. The open syllable is the opposite of the closed syllable. The vowel is left open in the syllable and make it's long sound.

I use legs as a visual under the vowel in the open syllable words to represent how the vowel is free in the open syllable and able to "run away" the vowel is also free to say it's long sound without a pesky consonant closing it in. The words I and a are considered open syllable words. An example of a word that contains multiple open syllables is solo.

Next, I teach vowel- consonant- e words. Some teachers call this spelling pattern magic e, or silent e.
To be a vowel-consonant -e syllable the vowel must make the long sounds and the e is silent. The visual I use for vowel- consonant- e is a leg "kicking" the vowel to remind the vowel to say it's long sound. I explain that the e is too busy reminding the vowel to say it's name that it doesn't make a sound.

Then I teach r-controlled syllables. R-controlled syllables are controlled by the r the vowel does not make a long or short sound.
I know some teachers the refer to this syllable as the "bossy r" because the r controlled the vowel, I like to use the visual of a coach because the r is coaching the vowel on the new sound they are making together, I also circle the r and the vowel to remind my students that these two letters make one sound. When teaching r-controlled words or syllables I teach or and ar separately since they make a different sound (think barn and thorn) and ir, er, and ur together since they make the same sound (think dirt, turn, and herd).

The double vowel syllable is next! Both syllables with vowel teams and diphthongs are considered double vowel syllables. Syllables with vowel teams are two vowels together in a word that make the long sound of the first vowel in the team. Examples of vowel teams are ai, ay, ee, ea, ey, ow (as in snow), oe, oa, ie, ui, ue. Diphthongs are what some people consider the "whiners" they are two vowels (and sometimes a w) that make a new sound examples are aw, au, oi, oy, ou, and ow (as in cow).
The visual I use for the double vowel syllable is a pot of soup. I use the pot of soup because I explain that the two letters work together to make something new like the ingredients in the soup work together to make a new flavor. I circle both letters to provide a visual to demonstrate how both vowels work together as a team to make one sound. 

Finally, the sixth syllable type is the consonant-le syllable type. The consonant- le syllable is part of a multi syllabic word that contains another syllable type. This syllable contains three letters a consonant, a l and an e. The consonant- le syllable ends a multi syllabic word. To decode consonant-le syllables the e is silent and the consonant and the l sound blend together.

The visual I use for consonant- le syllables is a pair of lips, when I read consonant - le syllables the notice the position of my tongue and my lips when I am producing the consonant and the l sound.

You can download my syllable guide and all six syllable posters for free in my teacherspayteachers store. Click here!

I'm looking forward to continuing to blog about syllables in my Syllables Made Simple series- what types of questions do you have about syllables that you would like answered? What types of products would you like to see created to help you teach syllables and syllable types? Let me know in the comment section below.


Adaptive Work Binder

Hi!
Happy October! I hope everyone is having a great school year.

When I first started teaching special education I struggled with how to organize tasks for my students. One year I created tasks and placed them in bins- my students had a reading bin, a writing bin, a math bin, a functional skills bin. I wish I had a picture because looking back my bin system was a hot mess! 

I started keeping my tasks in a binder and I find this system much easier to manage. What's is great about it is I can easily add and remove pages/ tasks for my student's individual binders. The binders themselves are easy to store (I use a bookcase). The binders are also easy to transport my students can bring their binder/ tasks to the general education classroom, or home to complete a task as homework or practice. 

The tasks I created for the binder help build my student's independence. I compiled 353 pages of tasks into a huge Adaptive Work Binder.



Parts of this pack are editable.
The first part of this pack is about your student's personal information:

There are pages in the pack for students to trace and match their first name.

 There is a page in the pack for students to practice their address. 

There is a page in the pack for students to practice how old them are/ their birthday information.


There are many sorting activities in the pack.  In the pictures below you can see the sorting between two fields . Many pictures are included in the pack so once your students have mastered sorting the objects in their binders add different objects by switching pieces between your students binders.



Other color matching activities are included. I created pages for students to match 3D objects to their binders. I created color matching sheets with Popsicle sticks, counting bears, and cubes.


In order to make this more manageable I store the Popsicle sticks, bears, and cubes in my student's pencil pouches. When my student's are completing a matching activity they take out their sticks, bears, or cubes and match.

In the pencil pouch I also keep an erasable marker and a dry erase eraser in the pouch for tracing activities. 



Some of the pages are created for just matching colored objects.
To make the pages more challenging some of the cubes/ bears were left blank for your students to begin patterning.






Other matching activities include matching shapes. I chose two dimensional and some three dimensional shapes for the shape matching activities. 

Activities included are matching shapes (three on the page)





I also included pages for matching shapes to one large shape. When my students have difficulty matching shapes I set up their binders like the picture below. This way my students can match without the fear of being wrong. As my students get more proficient in matching I mix up the pieces on the left hand side of the page creating the opportunity for my students to receptively match the small pieces the larger shape. 






Other matching activities include matching objects. I begin with having my students match identical objects. I find that this activity helps in their ability to scan the whole page and look for a match.

After my students become proficient on scanning and finding identical objects I add non identical object pages to their binders. I find this helps in my student's generalization skills. For example, students are required to match a green and yellow apple to a red apple.

Other matching pages include functional signs and transportation vehicles. 



This binder also includes practice in activities for daily living.

Students have to look at the picture, gauge the temperature, and decide what to wear based on the weather.

I believe learning coins and their values is such an important skills. Even though our world is using credit cards more and more I cannot send my kiddos off without some practice in coin identification. 
Matching front and backs of coins are included in this pack as well as pages to match coin values.

I also practicing telling time with my students. This pack includes activities for matching time to the hour and the 1/2 hour, both analog and digital clocks are included.




I also created a page for drawing the time on a clock. The page is editable so the teacher can decide to work on telling time to the hour, 1/2 hour, or 5 minutes.


There are also sorting/ categorizing pages included in this pack. 

I created "Does it Belon"g setting sorting sheets. Each setting has pieces that belong in the settings and those that don't. 


Other category sorting activities include important concepts including full vs. empty, big vs. small, boys vs. girls.



There are many math activities included in this pack. 

In addition to matching numbers to ten frames, and matching numbers there are many other math activities.

One of the activities in the pack is matching numbers 1-20 to a set.




Also included is matching numbers 1-5, 1-10, and 1-20.


Tracing numbers 0-9
There are also literacy activities included in the pack. 

Matching lowercase letters to lowercase letters.

Matching uppercase letters to uppercase letters.
Also included is matching lowercase letters to uppercase letters. 

The pack also has pages devoted to individual letter page. 

Tracing uppercase and lowercase letters
When my students learn sight words I add them to my student's binders for additional practice. 
This editable sight word sheet allows you to add in your student's individual sight words. 
I also included sight word matching sheets including color words.

To purchase the pack and see the full list of pages included in this pack click here!

How do you organize independent tasks in your classroom?