If you teach kindergarten, you know how important teaching CVC words is. Not only segmenting and writing short vowel words, but also reading CVC words fluently.
Being able to decode CVC words is so important, but it’s just the first step. Once students are able to decode and read short vowel words, they need to work on reading short vowel words fluently.
What is Reading Fluency?
Reading fluently means that you are able to read a text accurately and with the correct speed and expression. Reading fluency is important for reading comprehension. Think about it – your brain can only focus on so much at a time! If you’re focusing on decoding words, comprehending what you read takes a back seat.
How to Build Short Vowel Reading Fluency
So how do you build students’ short vowel CVC words fluency?
Well, like anything else, it takes a lot of practice! One of my favorite ways to practice is with reading fluency worksheets. My students love using our sight word fluency sentences, so I knew they would love CVC word reading fluency passages too!
These CVC fluency passages use simple sentences. This gives students practice with reading CVC words in context without overwhelming them with a long reading passage.
How to Use CVC Word Fluency Passages
These reading fluency passages allow you to focus on one word family at a time. First, you will have students read the CVC words in isolation. You can make this more interesting by giving them fun pointers to use while reading. Students may have to decode these words at first, but they will continue until they can read them with expression.
Then, students can find the word family words in the sentences and highlight or underline them. This helps draw their attention to the word as they are reading. Do you have to let students highlight the words? No! In fact, not finding and highlighting the words before can make this a little more challenging.
Students will read the short vowel fluency sentences independently. I don’t suggest choral reading because students rely too much on what others are saying rather than on the words. I suggest having students read the sentences three times through.
When students finish reading the CVC word fluency sentences, there are two choices for differentiation. You can have them cut out match the CVC words to the pictures or you can have them write a sentence using one of the short vowel words.
CVC Word Fluency while Kindergarten Distance Learning
I’ve included digital reading fluency passages for Google Slides™️ as well as PNG images of each page. You can insert the PNGs right into Seesaw™ and assign!
Reading to start building your kindergarteners CVC word reading fluency? Grab the short vowel reading fluency worksheets here!
