CVC Words Teaching Resources

Make teaching CVC words in the primary grades easier with our extensive collection of CVC word lists, CVC word worksheets, CVC word activities, and more. Find kindergarten CVC activities for reading centers and teacher-created resources to help students with reading CVC words, plus a range of interactive and hands-on resources for your phonics instruction.

This comprehensive collection of CVC words teaching resources from Teach Starter's teacher team has curriculum-aligned options to help you cut down on the time-consuming task of lesson planning and help your elementary class meet both Common Core and state-level standards. Many of the digital and printable teaching resources in the collection are easily editable, you can differentiate instruction to meet students' individual needs.

What Are CVC Words?

Has it been awhile since you taught this section of the ELA curriculum? Our teacher team has a quick refresher course for you!

Short for consonant-vowel-consonant, CVC words are a building block of early literacy. Learners read CVC words by blending the individual phoneme sounds together.

Examples of some CVC words a student may learn in kindergarten include cat, bed, gum, and pig. As students gain literacy skills, they move on to CCVC words (consonant consonant vowel consonant) and CVCC words (consonant vowel consonant consonant).

Four-Letter CVC Words

Wait, if it's CVC, how can there be four-letter words? Ah, the English language is such a trickster!

Despite the pattern of consonant-vowel-consonant, not all CVC words are three letters long. The vowel portion of a CVC word refers to the vowel sound rather than a singular letter. Keep, for example, is a four-letter CVC word. We'll keep it around even if it does break the rules!

What Is the CVC Word Rule?

The CVC word rule commonly taught to students in the primary grades can help them develop their spelling skills in later elementary school. If the last three letters of a one-syllable word follow a CVC pattern, then the last consonant should be doubled when adding the ending.

For example, big will become "bigger."