Dividing syllables

     If all closed syllable words a student came in contact with were only one syllable long, kids would be set. They would be able to identify the syllable as closed, apply the short vowel sound, and read the word.  Unfortunately, it is not that easy.  There are numerous words that are multisyllabic (having more than one syllable) in the English language.  Multisyllabic words are often the downfall of students but they don't have to be.  Just like we can teach students to identify closed syllables, we can teach them to identify the number of syllables in a word and then where to break the word to read each syllable component.
     As we know, each syllable is built around a vowel so the vowels are the key to knowing how many syllables are in a word.  For many words such as napkin, object, discuss, plastic, himself you can simply count the number of vowels to determine the number of syllables.  In the beginning, when all I have introduced is closed syllable words, I purposely choose words such as the above 2 syllable words to help students gain ample practice in focusing on the vowels to break words into syllables.  Then, I teach students to look at the word structure.  All of the above examples follow a VCCV (Vowel, Consonant, Consonant, Vowel) pattern because the structure is marked at the first vowel and continues to the next vowel.  
     The VCCV structure is divided between the consonants.  (nap/kin, ob/ject, and him/self) Once students are comfortable dividing this standard structure, words with s, l, and r blends as well as digraphs such as ck, ch, sh, th, ph, and wh can be introduced with the explanation that these blends and digraphs are usually NOT divided.  One example is the word enchant. Just by looking at the unrelated vowels and counting them, we can see that it has 2 syllables. Since we don't divide between the consonant digraph, we can consider it one consonant team so we divide between the consonant n and the consonant team ch (en/chant) which follows the division structure the students have already practiced.  True, there will be some words that don't follow the division rule but when students decode the syllables, they will approximate the word, which should allow them to self correct and continue reading.