Improve Decoding Skills with these 2-Syllable Word Activities (2024)

It seems there are always some obstacles as children increase their reading abilities. Some of the most common problems are being able to pronounce new words correctly, skipping parts of words, or guessing at words or parts of words.

I don’t know why kids do some of these things, but if I had to guess, I think it’s because they are so excited to be humming along reading at such a great pace and then BAM! they hit a word they don’t know. They don’t want to get hung up and slow down to sound out the word, so they just guess at part of the word and move on. At this stage, kids are more concerned with reading than comprehending. So, giving them some quick tools to take care of these roadblocks can really help them in their reading.

Let’s talk about syllables and ways to help your child improve their reading abilities as they begin to encounter more complex words!

A syllable is often called a “word chunk”. Syllables are the sounds that go together to create all of our words. The word muffin is made up of two syllables: muf and fin. Learning to find and decode the syllables in unknown words is a critical skill to gaining reading fluency and comprehension.

In the beginning, children start reading one-syllable words. Their first sight words and word family words are all one-syllable words. Most them are short vowel words, too. Once they are fluently reading one-syllable words, it’s time to move on to two-syllable words.

An easy place for most kids to start is with words that have simple pronunciations. A lot of these words will have two short-vowel syllables since that is what early readers are most familiar with sounding out. Think muffin, button, combat.

There are a few guidelines that make it easier to decode new two syllable words.

1) In general, the first syllable is stressed for nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Think woman, muffin, stuffy, careful, quickly, often.

2) Verbs usually have the second syllable as their stressed syllable. object, record, conflict

3) Open syllables (syllables that end in a vowel) almost always have a long vowel sound. ho-tel, be-gin, ba-sic, a-pron

4) Closed syllables (syllables where the vowel is surrounded by consonants) tend to have short vowel sounds. but-ton, muf-fin, but-ter

I noticed when my daughter reads, she sometimes leaves out whole letter sounds. She will see the word Pompei and pronounce it Po-pei (and she’ll pronounce it poe-pee for example. One way to work on this obstacle is to do some activities where you practice breaking down larger unknown words by syllable.

There are lots of activities you can do together to work on reading by syllables. clip cards are usually a hit with kids. But, you can also find some really cool 2-syllable words and practice breaking them down into syllables.

This is also a great time to talk about closed- and open-syllables. Knowing that a closed-syllable usually has a short vowel sound and an open-syllable usually has a long vowel sound can really improve pronunciation when it comes to reading 2-syllable words.

Another common problem with spelling and reading words with two syllables is that children will often leave out a vowel sound.

My daughter was making signs for a game she and her sister were playing one day. They were setting up a library in their bedroom. They made a sign that said “Oppn for Busness”.

This common reading mistake can be worked on by talking about the face that every syllable needs to have one vowel sound. The word open has two syllables. Therefore, it must have two vowels. The word business has three syllables, so….three vowels. Clapping out the number of syllables for a word is a great way for a child to know how many vowel sounds he or she will need to have. This can help them include all the necessary vowels when they try to spell the word.

Emergent readers will often guess at the ending of a word. Your child comes across the word action and they say “acting”. They know -ing says ing, so obviously -tion must sound differently. But, they know it’s an ending and they want to keep going, so they guess at it.

The best way to help your child successfully navigate new words and word endings is to increase their syllable vocabulary. The more familiar they become with prefixes, suffixes, and common word parts, the more easily they can sound out new words on the fly.

If your child guesses at the endings of words, spend some time working on sounding out longer words with them by clapping or stomping (or whatever-ing) the syllables.

Once you have separated the syllables, you can talk about open- and closed-syllables and their pronunciations.

You can also review lists of words that contain common prefixes and suffixes. You don’t have to just read a list of words……booooorrrrring! Here are a few simple ideas:

1) Write the words on index cards and play memory match.
2) Create a crossword puzzle. (There are free online generators for this)
3) Create a word search. (Make it in Excel and print)
4) Write the words on index cards (can just use the memory match cards) and place them around the house for a scavenger hunt.

A little activity goes a long way for young learners!

One big hang up for emerging and even more proficient readers can be how to pronounce a new word. Is the vowel a long vowel? A short vowel? Where is the stressed syllable?

If your child struggles with how to pronounce vowel sounds in unknown words, there are a few strategies you can brush up on to help his or her.

1) Review the syllable rules. This will help your son or daughter correctly break the word into syllables. You can find this printable poster in my shop here.

2) Talk about open and closed syllables. Open syllables end in a vowel and usually have a long vowel sound. Closed syllables have the vowel surrounded by consonants and generally have a short vowel sound.

3) Nouns, adjectives, and adverbs are usually stressed on the first syllable. Verbs are usually stressed on the second syllable. Help your child learn to use the context to determine what part of speech the word is in their reading.

Practice is the name of the game when it comes to reading abilities. Here are some fun activities and printables to let your child practice working with syllables.

You can grab these free 2-Syllable Word Hunt activity pages by signing up for my email list at the bottom of this post.

Teachers Pay Teachers has great products for so many things! You can find a lot of free resources, but the paid ones are usually very reasonably priced an really high quality. These free resources look fun for working on 2-syllable words:

Children take turns reading word cards in this fun game. But, if they pull a Roar! card they have to put back their stack. Oh no! There is also a similar rabbit version of this type of game.

Practice creating real words from syllable cards in this self-checking activity.

There are also several worksheets on this site that provide syllable practice. You can find worksheets for a bit more challenging words here.