BUILD IT! CVC, CCVC, And CVCC Words | Teach Starter

As your students learn to spell, they’ll discover that letter patterns emerge. 

Because all English words have at least 1 vowel (a,e,i,o,u), students will see their earliest sets of spelling words broken down into these types:

• CVC = Consonant, Vowel, Consonant
• CVCC = Consonant, Vowel, Consonant, Consonant
• CCVC = Consonant, Consonant, Vowel, Consonant

To play this Build It! game, students will decode and spell CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words using different color connecting cubes to show where the vowel sound is placed. 

How to Practice Spelling with Our CVC, CCVC, & CVCC Words Game

This resource can be used as a reading center activity for individual instruction, with your guided reading group, or as full class instruction for Segmenting and Blending CVC Words to practice decoding and spelling CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words.

Students will need to be provided with red and blue connecting cubes. 

To play, they will choose a picture on the task card and say the word. As they sound out the word, they will build it using blue cubes for the consonants and red cubes for the vowels. 

Get More Out of Our CVC, CCVC, & CVCC Words Game! 

The activity ideas for this resource are endless. Here are a few ways we came up with to extend consonant and vowel understanding and spelling practice with your students.  

Rhyme Time

Prompt students to start building word families! Have students list rhyming words for each card they collected throughout the game. For example, for the cat card, they might also come up with hat, mat, sat, and rat—all part of the -at family because they all share the letters ‘at’. Then, they can share their lists with a partner to read.

Sentence Writing

Are your students working on writing sentences? Have them choose a card, write a sentence and draw a picture using that word. 

Exit Activity

Use this activity as a post-lesson assessment. Pass out a card and a set of red and blue connecting cubes or legos to each student. Ask students to sound out the word on their cards and build it using the correct order of consonants and vowel pieces. 

Change the Difficulty Level if Needed

Have students in your class who are breezing through this lesson? After covering the correct picture to match the call-out card, have students spell the word out loud or write the word on whiteboards.

For students who need more time with the content, prompt them to use a visual reminder like an alphabet chart that differentiates consonants and vowels.

Easily Prepare This Resource for Your Students

Print the task cards on cardstock for added durability and longevity. Place all game parts in a folder or large envelope for easy access. 

Before You Download

Use the drop-down icon on the Download button to choose between the PDF or Google Slides version of this resource. 

This resource was created by Lindsey Phillips, a teacher in Michigan and a Teach Starter Collaborator. 

We’ve got CVC, CCVC, CVCC word activities galore! Check out a few teacher-approved (and student-approved!) games and worksheets below:

teaching resource

SPLAT! CCVC Word Game

A set of 36 task cards to practice decoding and reading CCVC words.