Search Recognizing Syllable Educational Resources

Every syllable has at least one vowel, however their arrangements differ after that. There are six (sometimes seven) official types of syllables. Understanding how to identify syllables, and how they affect the way words and phrases are pronounced, is an important step on the path to fluency. The Education.com worksheets, activities, and lesson plans below are designed to bring students closer to understanding syllables.

All syllables have at least one vowel. Syllables are classified by the exact number of vowels, their location within the syllable, and the number of consonants accompanying the vowel(s).

There are six, sometimes seven types of syllables:

• Closed syllables have only one vowel, and end in consonants. Examples of closed syllables include duck, car, mud, and dog.
• Open syllables also have only one vowel, but the vowel is at the end of the word. Examples of open syllables include I, a, and no.
• Silent-E syllables end in an e, have only one consonant before that, and only one vowel preceding the consonant. Examples of silent-e syllables include these, there, and hare.
• Vowel combination syllables have groupings of two or three vowels, or a vowel-consonant pair with a sound unique to those groups. Vowel combination syllables look like: pie, tree, and see.
• Vowel-R syllables have only one vowel followed by either an r, or r and silent e, or a have a vowel combination followed by an r. Examples of vowel-r syllables are the words or, air, and deer.
• Consonant-L-E syllables have a consonant followed by le. Examples include the ‘gle’ in single, ‘ble’ in fable, and ‘dle’ in cradle.
• The last, and sometimes unmentioned syllable type, is the diphthong, which is a combination of adjacent vowels. Diphthong examples include: toy, audio, and foil.

Students who use the above Education.com resources will build the important skill of recognizing syllables, instrumental in identifying components of compound words and forming contractions.