Unlock the Joy of Learning CVC Words: Tips for Teaching Kids to Read

Unlock the Joy of Learning CVC Words

The joy of watching young minds learn to read is unparalleled for any teacher!

Reading forms the foundation of education. If kids learn to read well, they can better understand any of the other subjects they are taught in school, from mathematics and science to history and geography. They are words first!

That said, while reading can come very naturally to some kids, others might face their own fair share of difficulties along this journey.

That is why teachers like to begin with simple CVC words that children can string together on their own and learn to read without struggling too much.

What are CVC words in English you ask? Let us explain! We will also show you how your students can easily master these words with the help of certain neat tips and tricks!

What are CVC words in English?

CVC words are simple three-letter words with a single syllable sound. They follow a fixed format of beginning with a consonant, having a vowel in the middle and ending with a consonant too. These simple CVC words can help students understand the basics of phonetics while helping them acquire the skills of rhyming, reading as well as writing.

How to read CVC words: a brief guide to helping your students

You might think reading CVC words is the easiest thing to do but kindergartners are still grasping the alphabet and trying to understand the sounds and relationships between different alphabets. As such, reading CVC words may not come to them naturally. Which is why they have to be taught how to in a fun and engaging manner.

These tips will help you get your students excited about learning how to read CVC words!

Make use of read and reveal cards

The idea of these cards is simple. One side is a CVC word, which kids can use to enunciate each sound in a word to eventually join it into a single word. On the other side of the card is a clipped image of the word that is in the card.

For example, if the word is cat, the card will spell the letters of cat on one side and will have the clipped image of the cat on the other side. Once the student is done stringing the letters together, they can unclip the image and check if they were right. The joy they get in figuring out the word on their own as they see the image reinforces them to pick up new words and learn more!

You can add these to your students’ daily work bins or leave them on their desk for them to figure out!

Or read and match cards

A variation of the previous one, in this one instead of clipped images, you have two sets of cards. One set of cards spell common CVC words, and the other set features a pictorial representation of those very words. What students have to do is read the word and match it with its corresponding picture. Now that is simple and effective!

You can turn this into a group activity or have kids go at it on their own. We suggest keeping the colour of the word card and the image card different so kids can easily sort through them without getting lost. This simple activity challenges kids to use their analytical skills and can help them pick up words faster!

Create word family booklets

CVC words are a formulation of all the vowels: a, e, i, o and u. You can create a vowel family set and turn them into little activity booklets which kids can interact with to learn the words. Add some space for activities like circling the CVC word, colouring it as well as writing them and kids will quickly get hooked to them!

This is a great activity for independent learning. You can carry it on with multiple booklets of different CVC word families to keep getting kids to learn new words as well as read simple sentences. Kids will definitely love learning this way!

Hand out simple passages to read

If your students have mastered the basics of CVC words, you can move on to simple passages made up of easy CVC words and get your students to read them. Each passage would contain CVC words from the same family so they are relatively easy to read. Each passage will also consist of activities such as colouring a star for each time the passage is read, re-writing their favourite sentence of the passage and drawing the principle of the subject of the passage. For example, if the passage is about cats, students can draw a cat at the end.

Use tactical CVC word sets

Learning to read a new word can become a lot easier for students if they can build that word themselves. You can use tactile CVC sets for this purpose. All you have to do is create image cards of CVC words, leaving the letter sections blank. Give your students the cards along with a block of alphabets and watch them place the appropriate alphabet in the given blank of the image card, thus forming the respective word.

CVC words list

Now that we have spoken about how to read CVC words, let us take a look at a list of common CVC words.

Vowel A words

Vowel E words

Vowel I words

Vowel O Words

Vowel U words

The above CVC words list is by no means exhaustive. It is just to give you an idea of what these words can be like. At EuroKids, we take the best approach to teach kids how to read CVC words, incorporating fun activities into the mix to keep them engaged. To know how we do this, pay a visit to your nearest EuroKids centre.