Teaching Open and Closed Syllables with Confidence

Open and closed syllables are the first two types of syllables that students should learn. Learning about syllable types helps students decode multisyllabic words as they are exposed to higher level vocabulary. These are typically the first syllable types students are taught when they begin learning about syllable division.

What are open and closed syllables?

Open syllables end with a vowel and that vowel is long. Closed syllables end with a consonant and the vowel is short. For example, the word even has one open syllable and one closed syllable. The first syllable -e- has a long vowel sound. The second syllable -ven- has a short vowel sound.

There are many one-syllable words that are closed syllables, like cat, pen, and fun. These words have short vowel sounds. There are also some one-syllable words that are open syllables, like me, go, she, and so. These one syllable open and closed syllable words should be students’ first introduction to these syllable types.

Later on students can learn about additional syllable types, but these are the two that should be introduced first. Click here to read about the other syllable types.

How should I teach open and closed syllables?

As students are first introduced to open and closed syllables, they should begin working with one syllable words. I find that it’s easiest to introduce closed syllables when students have a firm grasp on CVC words and it’s easiest to introduce open syllables when students are learning about long vowel sounds. If your students are taught open syllables before long vowel sounds, these syllables will not make sense!

I like to give my students sorting activities like the ones above. The first activity (on the left) contains only one syllable words that have both open and closed syllables. Students have to read the words and determine whether the syllable is open or closed and then sort them. I’ve taught them to look for a consonant at the end of the syllable to tell them whether the syllable is closed or not. In this activity, students should be reading the words aloud and listening for the vowel sound as well as looking for a consonant sound at the end of the word.

I also ask them to do a similar sort (on the right) where they look for short and long vowel sounds because this reinforces that closed syllables result in a short vowel sound and open syllables result in a long vowel sound. The whole point of teaching students about open and closed syllables is so that they can accurately decode the vowel sounds in multisyllabic words. Activities like this one reinforce those vowel sounds.

I like to include a variety of other activities like task cards (pictured above) and sorting pages (pictured below) to give my students a lot of practice identifying open and closed syllables in one syllable words before we move on to multisyllabic words.

One of my favorite activities to really reinforce open and closed syllables is the open and closed door matching game. When I teach open and closed syllables, I tell my students that the closed syllables have a consonant closing the word’s door, keeping the vowel short. Open syllables don’t have a consonant closing the door, so the vowel can shout out its name making it a long vowel.

In this activity, students will use the ‘door’ pieces to match an open door. They’ll use the match to ‘close the door’ and turn the open syllable into a closed syllable. The door visual is a great way to help my students remember the difference between open and closed syllables.

When I feel that my students have a solid foundation of open and closed syllables with one syllable words, I’ll introduce two syllable words that have open and closed syllables. They should be able to read these two syllable words because they have an understanding of how the vowel sound changes within the syllables.

What should come after students know open and closed syllables?

You can read more about the different syllable types in this blog post. After your students are successful reading multisyllabic words with both open and closed syllables, you can begin to teach them about CVCe words and silent e syllables. This will help them build their skills reading unknown multisyllabic words. It’s important to wait to introduce the different syllable types until you’ve taught the phonics skill associated with each type.

Looking for more info on teaching syllables? Check out these blog posts!