Description

Do you know a learner who is struggling to read polysyllable words? Try our new, download-and-print card game, Syl-lab-it, using these free sample cards.

This free sample game has 2-4 syllable words with simple spellings/syllable structures printed on the cards – words like ‘solid’, ‘pelican’ and ‘benefited’. A smaller-print version of the word has syllables circled and stressed syllables shaded. Sometimes, syllable circles overlap, as there’s often more than one way to break a word up (e.g. by sound or word structure. Skilled readers think about both), and coarticulation happens between syllables, not just within them.

The circles and shading make it easy to show learners that a syllable can be represented by a vowel letter alone, or a vowel letter/spelling plus one or more consonants. This is useful in teaching learners to read one syllable at a time, and adjust word stress.

The full set of 12 extra decks includes adjacent consonants (consonant blends/clusters) and multiple vowel spellings grouped by vowel sound.

There’s both a single-sided and double-sided version of the file, the latter in case you think your Syl-lab-it decks might get jumbled up. Print on 3 sheets of A4 card or paper (at ~110% if your printer can manage narrow margins), laminate and cut up into cards. This is a game for two players who each start with five cards and ten tokens (counters, coins, whatever). Play continues until someone loses all their tokens, and thus the game.

There are five types of cards, three of which are used on your own turn (attack, steal, heal) and two of which can be played to spoil your opponent’s turn (deflect, overpower). We have a video showing how to play Syl-lab-it here.

Hope your learners have great fun, and learn a lot, playing Syl-lab-it!