Methods for teaching how to sound out multisyllabic words?

[nature girl]

My DD reads single syllable and simple two-syllable words fluently, but as soon as more letters or more complex phonograms are added she gets confused. For example, she can read the words "to" and "night" easily, but unless I block out one syllable at a time with my finger she'll sound out the word as T-Ah-Nig-Hut. Anything over two syllables completely overwhelms her. She knows most phonograms and can clap out syllables when speaking words, but doesn't recognize syllable endings when she sees them, so doesn't know to use a long vowel sound. Because of this, we've been stuck on level 2 Easy Readers for quite awhile and don't seem to be making much progress. (Note that I've never done a formal phonics program with her, other than going through Progressive Phonics together and teaching new phonograms as they come up in our everyday reading.)

 

Is this something that will come naturally in time? Or are there any methods or programs I could use to help her progress?

[ElizabethB]

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/WellTaughtPhonicsStudent.html

[EKS]

REWARDS is amazing for this.

[sbgrace]

I used Elizabeth's syllable division material she linked above, which was so helpful here.

 

Then I purchased scholastic Week by Week Phonics and Word Study so we would continue to have daily practice. It seems solid, and I've seen a lot of improvement with just 5 or so minutes a day.

[Kathie in VA]

Megawords covers reading and spelling multi-syllable words ... starts at 4th grade level...

[creekmom]

This is a great, easy to use resource that will help her with syllable patterns:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Syllable-Patterns-Comprehension-Adolescent/dp/1934338397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407297347&sr=8-1&keywords=Syllable+patterns

[amazzie]

Explode the Code Book 8 does multisyllabic words. I am having my son do it so he will slow down and look at the entire word rather than just guess. He didn't do the preceding books.

[Tanikit]

Your DD is very young. I found with mine who also read very young that I had to do the syllabification for her for a while - I did teach her the rules, and I taught her to uncover the word slowly when trying herself - but at this age they very often still need to be taught about prefixes and suffixes too and this can take time. I found with my child that endings like -ed and -ing came first (she knew how to split these first) and then later certain prefixes and finally longer multisyllable words. Even then these words start to become more Latin based (so democrat, democracy, democratic have their accent on different syllables which makes figuring out by phonics alone how the word is pronounced quite difficult - many people just know these words as adults from having heard them rather than read them initially)

 

You can teach basic syllabification at her age, but you may still need to help some as vocabulary can be an issue - just keep reading aloud to her to increase her vocabulary and help with the syllabification as needed.