A closed syllable exception is a syllable that contains one vowel, followed by one or more consonants, but instead of a short vowel sound, it has a long vowel sound. There are only five spelling patterns related to the closed syllable exceptions: ild, ind, old, olt, and ost. These exceptions break the normal pattern of closed syllables, where the vowel sound is usually short. Closed syllable exceptions should be taught after students have learned the short and long sounds of each vowel, most vowel teams, open and closed syllables, digraphs, blends, and glued sounds, typically around second grade. To teach closed syllable exceptions, teachers can use multisensory techniques such as tapping, marking, and drawing boxes around the exceptions in decodable texts. Some fun activities for teaching closed syllable exceptions include blending to read words with closed syllable exceptions, sorting words by syllable types, and marking up words that are closed syllable exceptions.