Segmenting Words into Syllables

Segmenting spoken words into syllables is the most simple phonological awareness skill for most children. It involves breaking words into chunks or beats and each beat will contain a vowel sound, for example, the word ‘big’ contains one syllable, ‘fish/ing’ contains two syllables, and ‘hip/po/pot/a/mus’ contains five.

Syllable awareness activities include:

Counting syllables –  How many syllables in teddy?

Segmenting 3-4 syllables –  Say the syllables in Samantha. ‘Sa-man-tha’

Segmenting unfamiliar, multi-syllable words – Say the syllables in separate. ‘Sep/ar/ate’.

Deleting and adding syllables – Say the syllables in  ‘bookmark’. ‘Book/mark’. Now just say the first syllable. ‘Book’. Say the word birth. ‘Birth’. Now say the word day. ‘Day’. Now put them together. ‘Birthday’.