CVC words are consonant-vowel-consonant words. They are words like cat, zip, rug, and pen. The vowel sound is always short. These words can be read by simply blending the individual phoneme sounds together.

Readers need a lot of tools in their reading tool kit.  We teach our readers sight words so that they can easily read those words that are not easily decodable.  We show our readers how to use the picture to help them figure out words in a book.

Our goal is for our students to stretch out words they don’t know and blend them together.  These short words are a great place to start when practicing this skill.  Students who have a strong foundation in letter sounds will be successful when blending CVC words.  Your readers will be exposed to the process of stretching out words when reading.

There are many different ways to teach these words.  You need to do what works best with your style of teaching.  I love to teach this skill in conjunction with rhyming.  We pick a word family, find the rhymes, and then read and write the CVC words.  The –at family is a great place to start!