Should I use made-up words for practice?

Yes, two or three in every lesson. A made-up word such as zib or fom cannot be recognised from memory or guessed from the sentence, so it shows you whether your child is really decoding. Tell your child plainly that these are practice words and not real ones. If accuracy is high on real words and low on made-up ones, the real words are being remembered rather than read.

My child sounds out every letter but still cannot say the word. Why?

Almost always the sounds are being said too slowly, so the first has faded before the last arrives. Have your child say them again with no stopping in between, holding each one until the finger moves on, as in mmmaaannn. If that fails, say the three sounds yourself at ordinary speed and ask for the word. If they can blend when you say them, the problem is letter recall rather than blending.

How many words should we read in a day?

Ten to fifteen read words is a full session for most beginners, plus a handful built with tiles. Past that, accuracy usually drops, and a word read wrong is still being practised. Ten words every day for a fortnight will do more than fifty words twice a week, because each session repairs yesterday's memory instead of rebuilding it from nothing.

When can we start real books?

As soon as your child reads plain word lists accurately nearly every time, move on to decodable text built from the patterns taught so far. Ordinary picture books stay yours to read aloud for now; they are full of patterns your child has not met, and handing one to a beginner teaches guessing, which is the habit this stage exists to prevent.

How to Teach CVC Blending (Decoding Short Words)

CVC blending is reading a printed three-letter short-vowel word — cat, pin, mud — by turning each letter into its sound in order and pushing the sounds together. It is the first real reading. Ten minutes a day, using word lists that carry no pictures, usually gets a child there in four to ten weeks.

Touch, say, sweep: the motion that does the work

Put the word on an index card in large plain letters, with no picture anywhere near it. Your child touches under each letter and says its sound, /m/ /a/ /p/, then sweeps a finger left to right beneath the whole word and says it: map. The touch keeps the order honest, and the sweep is the instruction to join.

If the sounds keep falling apart between the touch and the sweep, stretch instead of stopping: have your child hold each continuous sound until the finger reaches the next letter, so the word comes out as one unbroken mmmaaap. Words that begin with a stop sound cannot be stretched that way, so start with words beginning m, s, f, l, n and r, and come to b, t and p once the motion is established.

The ten-minute lesson

Ten minutes, four parts, and the letter tiles matter more than the worksheet. Word building — changing one letter and rereading — puts your child's attention on the exact letter that changed, which is where the short-vowel errors live, and it is the part no printed page can do for you. If the day collapses and there are three minutes left, do the building.

Two minutes of sound review: only the letters used in today's words, flashed for the sound.
Three minutes building with tiles: make cat, then change one letter at a time — cat, cot, cop, cap, cup — with your child reading each new word aloud before the next change.
Three minutes reading a plain list of eight to twelve words with no pictures, two or three of them made up, such as zib or fom.
Two minutes reading the same words inside short sentences: The cat sat on a mat. A pup is in the mud.

Why the pictures come off the page

A picture beside a word tells your child the answer, and a child who can have the answer free will take it every time. The habit that forms — glance at the picture, glance at the first letter, say something plausible — works well enough at three letters and collapses the moment words get longer, which is why it is so often noticed two years after it started.

Decodable text is the useful exception. A decodable reader uses only the patterns your child has already been taught, so guessing gains nothing and sounding out always works. Faith Schooling publishes three hundred of them. The test of a good one is simple: cover every illustration with your hand and your child can still read the page.

Reading it right and reading it wrong

The signs that decoding has taken hold: your child reads a word never seen before, including a made-up one; moves steadily left to right instead of jumping to the last letter; gets the middle vowel right in pin rather than settling for pen; and, when a word does come out wrong, something registers as wrong and they go back without being asked.

The signs that it has not: the first letter is right and the rest is invention; the same word is read three different ways on one page; the vowel becomes whichever one was practised most recently; or your child looks up at your face after the first sound, reading you instead of the word. That last one is easy to feed by accident, so keep your face still.

When the vowel keeps sliding

Short vowels sound alike to a new ear, and pin against pen, cot against cut, and bed against bad are the standard collisions. Anchor each vowel to one keyword and one picture your child chose themselves, keep the five cards where they can be seen from the table, and when the vowel goes wrong point at the cards instead of saying the answer.

If two vowels keep trading places, take one of them out of the lesson entirely for a week. Read only a-words plus one other vowel until the a is automatic, then reintroduce the second and mix the two before adding a third. Mixing all five short vowels together from the first day is why so many children stay fuzzy on vowels for months on end.

The step to drop back to

When a printed word falls apart, find out which half broke. Say the sounds aloud yourself, /m/ /a/ /p/, and ask for the word. If your child can answer, blending by ear is fine and the trouble is letter-to-sound recall, so go back to letter sounds for a fortnight and keep the printed words to the letters that are solid. If they cannot answer, the blending itself has to be rebuilt by ear first.

A middle step helps many children: two-sound words first — at, in, up, am, on — and then an initial consonant added to make a three-sound word. Reading at, and then watching one letter arrive in front of it to make cat, is the same insight with one less thing to hold in mind.

How long this usually takes

Four to ten weeks of daily practice is typical for a child who already blends by ear. The first fortnight feels slow and the fourth week often feels sudden. Three or four seconds a word is perfectly fine here; pushing for pace now is what produces guessers later, and speed is the next skill's business rather than this one's.

An older child who reads longer words by sight but falls apart on made-up short words has a gap at this stage, not a general reading problem. Test with made-up words before you assume the difficulty is fluency, because real short words can be recognised from memory long after decoding has stopped working, and that memory is exactly what hides the gap.

First, your child should already…

This skill builds directly on:

Letter Sounds — master this first.
Oral Blending — master this first.

What your child is learning

Now the two earlier skills combine on the page: the child sounds out each letter left-to-right and blends them into a real printed word. This is the first true reading — decoding a word they’ve never been taught as a whole.

Signs your child is ready

Blends 3 sounds orally with ease
Knows the short-vowel sounds
Tracks print left-to-right

The common stumbling point

Guessing the word from a picture or first letter instead of decoding, and short-vowel substitutions (reading pin as pen). Not moving strictly left-to-right.

Practice this skill

Worksheets and decodable practice for CVC Blending (Decoding Short Words) are in the library.

Kindergarten — Short a 252 worksheets
Grade 2 — Long Vowel Teams Review 252 worksheets
Grade 1 — Sounds That Blend 216 worksheets
Grade 3 — Word Games & Puzzles 144 worksheets
Grade 4 — Word Games & Puzzles 144 worksheets
Grade 5 — Word Games & Puzzles 144 worksheets

Every set opens its first three worksheets to everyone; the rest are included with All Access.

Browse the whole practice library

How to know it’s mastered

The child accurately reads a list of unfamiliar CVC words (no pictures) — about 9 of 10 correct — by decoding, not guessing.

Common questions

Should I use made-up words for practice?: Yes, two or three in every lesson. A made-up word such as zib or fom cannot be recognised from memory or guessed from the sentence, so it shows you whether your child is really decoding. Tell your child plainly that these are practice words and not real ones. If accuracy is high on real words and low on made-up ones, the real words are being remembered rather than read.
My child sounds out every letter but still cannot say the word. Why?: Almost always the sounds are being said too slowly, so the first has faded before the last arrives. Have your child say them again with no stopping in between, holding each one until the finger moves on, as in mmmaaannn. If that fails, say the three sounds yourself at ordinary speed and ask for the word. If they can blend when you say them, the problem is letter recall rather than blending.
How many words should we read in a day?: Ten to fifteen read words is a full session for most beginners, plus a handful built with tiles. Past that, accuracy usually drops, and a word read wrong is still being practised. Ten words every day for a fortnight will do more than fifty words twice a week, because each session repairs yesterday's memory instead of rebuilding it from nothing.
When can we start real books?: As soon as your child reads plain word lists accurately nearly every time, move on to decodable text built from the patterns taught so far. Ordinary picture books stay yours to read aloud for now; they are full of patterns your child has not met, and handing one to a beginner teaches guessing, which is the habit this stage exists to prevent.

What comes next

Once this is solid, move on to:

Short-Vowel Fluency →