About this activity
Sixteen three-letter short-vowel words: cat, dog, sun, pig, bed, hop, run, mud, net, cup, fan, top, bug, hat, jet, lip. Every one is consonant-vowel-consonant with a short vowel and no complications, which makes this the first list a beginning reader can decode entirely from the letters rather than from memory.
How to use it in a session
Ask the student to sound it out rather than recognise it. A word recognised at a glance teaches nothing about decoding, and the point of a CVC list is that every word can be built from its letters. Cover the final consonant and reveal it last for a student who is guessing from the first two letters, which is the most common early habit. Eight minutes covers the sixteen with sounding out.
What to listen for
Watch the vowels. All five short vowels appear here, and /e/ in bed and net against /i/ in pig and lip is the pair most often confused. Notice whether errors are decoding or memory: a student who reads cat instantly and stalls on jet is recognising familiar words rather than decoding, and the unfamiliar ones are the useful data.
Carrying it home
CVC words are short enough to write on anything. Ask the child to sound out three words from a shopping list or a sign, rather than reading a whole page.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Kindergarten through second, at the start of decoding.
- Do I need to sign up?
- No, all sixteen words play free with no login.
- My student memorises these instead of decoding. Is that a problem?
- It limits what they can do with a new word. Mixing in nonsense words, or covering the last letter and revealing it, forces decoding where recognition would otherwise take over.