Students acquire the ability to hear larger chunks in words before they are able to hear discrete sounds, such as phonemes. Although this concept might seem strange, take a minute to test it out. Pretend you are a 2nd grade student. The teacher pronounces the word "Recess" and wants you to segment it. First, segment the word into syllables (re/cess). Next, segment the word into individual sounds, or phonemes (/r/ /e/ /s/ /e/ /s/). Briefly reflect: Which activity was harder for you?
As you have witnessed, hearing the syllables in words is an easier task than hearing discrete sounds. Therefore, syllable segmentation is taught before sound segmentation. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to develop your student's understanding of segmenting. As you read, consider which of these interventions best align with your student's strengths and needs in the whole learner domains.
Explicit Instruction
If you are intervening to support your students' ability to segment words into syllables, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:
Activity A: Syllable Segmentation
Tell the student that he will be breaking a word into its parts (syllables). The student says the word and then says the word parts. "I'm going to tell you a longer word that has more than one part. You are going to try to break it into its parts. The word is teacher. Tea-cher. Two syllables, two parts."
Reading Rockets. (2022, August 1). Blending and segmenting games: Classroom strategy. Retrieved from https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/blending_games
YouTube. (2017). Syllables! . Syllable Segmentation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S7DY2lgJlU.
Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a lesson about how to segment a word into sounds:
Teacher: "Segment the word hotdog."
Student: "Hotdog. Hot. D. Og. Hotdog has three syllables."
In such a case, what might you do?
When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout the activity. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and students respond differently to different types of feedback.
| Level of Support | Description of Scaffold | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest scaffold | Try again! Allows student multiple opportunities to practice new skill. In this case, you are trying to determine whether the student needs to be retaught the skills (because he cannot hear the sounds) or if the student simply wasn't attending to the sounds as he segmented the word. Determining the reason for the error will allow you to make decisions regarding next steps. | "Let's have you try to segment hotdog again." |
| Medium scaffold | Provide resources. Allows the student to use resources to figure out the answer (including helpful supports such as a picture, multisensory approaches, or specific prompts).
|
"Try segmenting the word hotdog again. You heard three syllables in the word, but there are only two. Can you segment the word again?" |
| Highest scaffold | Model, Lead, Test, Retest. Model for the student using this gradual release correction procedure adopted from Carnine, D.W., Silbert, J., Kame'enui, E. J. & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (4th Ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. | 1. Teacher says the correct answer. "Hotdog. Hot. Dog." 2. Teacher models: "My turn. Segment hotdog."(Signal.) "Hot. Dog" 3. Teacher leads: "Let's do it together. Segment hotdog."(Signal.) "Hot. Dog"(Teacher responds with the students.) 4. Teacher tests: "Your turn. Segment hotdog."(Signal.) "Hot. Dog" |
If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try, to adjust the activity to your student's needs.
| Activity | Description of strategy | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Syllable Segmentation | Make it move. Use multisensory approaches when segmenting syllables. Ask students to clap it out or tap it out. | "When I segment the word happy, I'm going to clap each syllable. Ready? Ha (clap) ppy (clap). Happy." |
| Shorten it! Give students shorter words to segment (two syllables instead of three). | "Let's try a shorter word. Clap out the syllables in the word 'silly.'" | |
| Repeat after me. Have students practice this task by repeating sounds in the words as you segment them. | "Let's do it together. I'll say the sounds and you'll repeat them after me. Ha." "Ha." "Ppy." "Ppy." | |
| Picture it. Show students a visual so they can refer back to it as they segment syllables and sounds. | "Here is a picture of ____. Use this as a reference as you segment the word." |