Missing Syllable: Say the Picture, Write the Part That Is Gone

Half of every word is on the page and half is not. This 1st grade missing-syllable worksheet lays out eight cards in two columns of four, each with an around-the-house picture — a hammer, a wall outlet, a mailbox, a closet, scissors, curtains, a mirror and a window on this sheet — and beneath it the word in spaced letters with one syllable replaced by a dashed box: ham ___, ___ let, mail ___, ___ et. The child says the picture word, works out which part is missing, and writes that syllable in the box. The box is sized for two to four letters, and the gap may fall on any syllable of the word — first, middle or last.

A syllable cloze asks something a letter cloze does not: the child has to hear the word in parts and then spell a whole part, not one letter, from memory of its sound. The printed half is the anchor that keeps the task about syllables rather than about spelling the whole word, and the picture supplies the word without a written model. Every word on this face comes from the set whose syllable breaks are agreed by the dictionary hyphenation used across the family, so the printed boundary is never a matter of taste.

It prints on one sheet with a pencil. Use it after the write-the-word-in-syllables page, since the child now supplies the syllable rather than copying it. Two- and three-syllable words are mixed; the around-the-house draw shown here can be swapped for other themes with the same eight-card layout.