Syllable division; why is it important?

[JABarney]

We have completed hooked on phonics - which upon looking back was a good introduction, but not nearly complete - and are working on ETC online and are in book 4 where they go over syllable division and all its variations depending upon vowel placement among the consonants. I do not remember having ever been taught this division with such specificity.

One of my 5 year olds is reading very, very well, but having not been taught anthing about this yet, is of course not knowing what to do. (Maybe the answers are in one of the books recommended by WTM, but seeing we received hooked on phonics as a gift we used that instead.)

My questions to anyone willing to answer:

Did you teach this to your children when teaching reading? Is it important and why?

 

Thanks!

[Chris in VA]

We are covering it in Adventures in Phonics C, and I know Phonics Pathways does, too (but we didn't quite complete it). We use it to help her segment words and make them easier to read and, esp., to spell.

[Sahamamama]

In the OPG, simple 2S words are not taught until Section 17, pretty far into the book. Then the lesson (#178) begins with a definition of a syllable -- "A syllable is a part of a word containing one vowel sound."

 

Air and plane are combined to make airplane, base + ball = baseball, and so on. These are familiar words that help the child to understand the concept of syllables and breaking longer words up into them, in order to better sound out the parts.

 

There is a suggestion in the first lesson on syllables to have the child clap while saying each syllable.

 

There is an additional activity to have the child use magnetic letters to form each one syllable word (base, ball) on a magnetic board (not touching) and read them separately, then slide the words together and say the compound word as a whole word.

 

Subsequent lessons use more compound words (bath + room = bathroom; some + where = somewhere), the le ending (little, puzzle, uncle), er ending (mother, number, paper), the ing ending (going, watching), and practice with 2 syllable words.

 

HTH.

[NewHomeSchoolMarm]

We use ETC online as a reinforcment of dd's reading and we have used BJUP Phonics, Phonics Pathways & Reading Pathways. Understanding syllables has been key to my daughter reading well and fluently. I have seen that it allows the children to apply the phonics rules in larger words. One example would be understanding that a vowel in an open syllable is long, like in moment, (Mo-ment)-the "O" is long. The child has to develop the habit of recognizing how a word is broken up and seeing the rule that would apply. A different example can be seen when my dd reads a word with an "e" at the end. She knows to have the vowel say its name. Reading Pathways helps the child to attack big words by breaking up a big word into its syllables-applying the right rule and decoding the word. That's my experience with it. HTH

 

NHSM

[Laura Corin]

Shhhhh...... it's not. We skipped book 4 of ETC and have never felt the lack. Part of this was a family problem: we have two ways in the family of pronouncing 'zebra' (either zee-bra or zeb-ra) and that alters the syllabification. Once I realised this (and other problems) I gave up. The only time the boys need to split the syllables is when they have to carry part of a word over to the next line. When that happens, I just tell them to make sure that the two halfs make aural sense. The boys also learned to clap syllables, but I'm not sure if that's crucial.

 

Best wishes

 

Laura

[nmoira]

It's not something we worry about for reading, but it is proving useful for DD with spelling. She's a excellent sight reader who can always identify correctly spelled words, but she sometimes has problems generating them. Megawords has made a huge difference in her spelling.

[PhunandFonics]

This is my take on teaching syllables. I was a natural reader and speller growing up. I was never taught anything about syllable types or how to divide words. I have been perfectly fine throughout my life without this knowledge.

 

ETC is Orton-Gillingham based, and O-G is designed to teach dyslexic children how to read. These kids do not intuit word structure like a natural reader. I have two children with dyslexia. It is essential for them to have this skill in order to have effective word attack skills, especially for multisyllabic words.

 

I've known several people that skip book 4 and either never do it or come back to it later. If your child is doing well with reading, then just skip it. But if she's struggling, then spend a few dollars for their TM and you'll be able to figure it out quite easily!

[Lovedtodeath]

We are working through book 3 right now. I looked over 4 and in order to actually sound words out rather than know them by sight, it makes sense to break down the syllables this way. Though it does seem to be a lot of work and rule memorization.

[mcconnellboys]

It helps with spelling!

[Ellie]

It helps with spelling!

 

It also helps with writing, yes, even in these days of computer word processing. Possibly I am the only person who remembers how to correctly hyphenate a word when writing on actual paper :-) but it is so.

 

Of course, there's this handy book called a dictionary which divides words into syllables, so one could always keep that on hand :-)