Description

Do you know a learner who is struggling to read polysyllable words? Try our dozen new, download-and-print card games, called Syl-lab-it. There’s an extra free one, with the easiest words of all, here.

2-4 syllable words are printed on the cards, and players must read them as they’re played. Smaller-print versions of each word have 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 12 games in this set target the following syllable types and sound-spelling relationships:

1. CVCC and CCVC syllables, e.g. ‘suspect’, ‘umbrella’ and ‘experiment’,
2. Words with three adjacent consonants (CCC) like ‘splendid’, ‘nondescript’ and ‘unrestricted’,
3. Words with consonant digraphs like ‘jacket’, ‘marathon’ and ‘establishment’,
4. Words with very common suffixes like ‘risky’, ‘talented’ and ‘abandoning’,
5. Words with VCe (‘split vowel’) syllable endings like ‘suppose’, ‘hesitate’ and ‘misfortune’.
6. Words with the sound /ae/ as in ‘betray’, ‘repainted’ and ‘complicated’,
7. Words with the sound /ee/ as in ‘medium’, ‘easily’ and ‘convenient’,
8. Words with the sound /oe/ as in ‘shadow’, ‘nobody’ and ‘overloaded’,
9. Words with the sound /er/ as in ‘hurting’, ‘thirstily’ and ‘personally’,
10. Words with the sound /ou/ as in ‘without’, ‘astounding’ and ‘powerhouses’
11. Words with the sound /ie/ as in ‘direct’, ‘justify’ and ‘insightful’,
12. Words with the sound /oo/ as in ‘cartoon’, ‘screwdriver’ and ‘absolutely’.

There’s a choice of single-sided or double-sided card version of each game, the latter in case your Syl-lab-it decks might get jumbled up. Print on 3 sheets of A4 light 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). There’s a video showing how to play Syl-lab-it here.

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