Introduction
Learning to blend can be extremely difficult for some students. Thankfully, we can do a few things with our kids to become better blenders and more automatic. Some kids with speech impediments may find blending hard. While teaching, we must over-emphasize the mouth position and sounds to support kids better.
Many parents have mentioned that a speech-to-print approach to teaching reading helps their child’s speech become more precise and intelligible.
I will first share with you some ways to support your child while reading words in a book or in isolation. After that, I will share some oral activities. Please note I recommend moving to the oral activities once your child has a good grasp of the English Code. This will allow them to continue progressing in their word attack while strengthening their blending abilities.
Identify the Errors
You will want to notice his errors as you listen to your child read and practice blending.
Is your child…
*Adding sounds?
*Omitting sounds?
*Saying the sounds but not able to string them together?
*Struggling to know how to ‘attack’ the word to read?
When we identify the errors, we can apply the proper feedback and approach to help your child become more successful at attacking the words and blending them.
Learning to Read is a Skill
Another problem may be working memory. As your child is learning to read, they must juggle a lot. We want to be patient but also give a challenge and encourage them to remember what they figured out first and string them together.
Learning to read is a skill; like with any skill, it is messy. Still, as we embrace the messy and give “EFFICIENT” WAYS TO PRACTICE, we will start seeing the child make significant gains.
What needs to be known to be able to blend words?
Blending is a skill that is needed to decode words. The goal is for our kids to be able to take each sound in a word and ‘stick’ them together to articulate the word.
Two things typically make blending hard.
First, students need to know how a word’s letters are linked. They need to understand that one spelling (the letters representing the sound) can have multiple sounds and that one sound can have numerous spellings.
We must introduce the kids early to this concept because it will build their word attack skills and help them get stuck in that one-to-one correspondence.
Second, students who have a poor phonemic awareness (hearing each sound in a word) tend to struggle with blending.
I also recommend NOT teaching the blends. You can follow Marnie at Reading Simplified to learn why this is important!!
Practicing Blending
Your child must practice blending both individual words and connected text. I will share how to help your child blend simple and multisyllabic words.
How to Help Your Child blend
Segmenting each letter and then blending them.
Segmenting each letter in the word and then blending them is a common way of blending.
For example, if your child was reading [flash]. They would say each sound with a little pause. /f/ /l/ /a/ /sh/ and then say flash.
Some kids can do this accurately and make a few errors as they go. However, many kids will add sounds and get sounds. This is where continuous blending can be helpful.
Continuous Blending
Continuous blending is where you blend each sound as you go. So let’s consider the word [flash] again. Your child would say the first two sounds. You will move to the first sound if they cannot do that. And have them start there. So it would be /f/, /fl/, /fla/, /flash/. You can use a small card to reveal sound by sound for extra support.
Now multi-syllable words can be taught similarly. However, it is essential to note that we can teach multisyllabic words without teaching the syllable rules. You can read this article from EBLI, a speech-to-print program, that explains why from Nora.
As a side note, we do not need to ditch the rules altogether, because they can become useful later in spelling and selecting the right sound for the letter combination.
Decoding and recalling rules can be overly taxing on the struggling reader.
How to blend Multisyllabic words
Multisyllabic words can seem scary, and many kids tend to look at parts of the word and give it a guess.
Like always, I encourage my kids to give it their best shot and read the word all the way through. This helps them become more comfortable with making mistakes and can reveal where there are disconnects.
After their attempt, I will cover up everything but the first chunk and have them read it. Then I reveal the next chunk. They will read this chunk and then blend it with the first one. You continue this process until they reach the end of the word.
Sometimes having the word all together can be challenging because of the size or knowing the proper breaks.
Over at Reading Simplified, I learned from the founder Marnie Ginsberg how to take a word and write it in chunks on a dry-erase board and then support the child to read the word chunk by chunk—giving support where needed.
Learning to Blend words together will Take Time and Explicit Practice
We must realize that blending is a subskill that needs to be developed for our children to become strong readers. A lot of times, there is a lot of modeling and doing it together. I will tell them to look at me and repeat what I say. After we do this for a few sessions, they can become more accurate.
I always tell my kids they need to repeat after me because the more we do it together, the sooner their brains will be ready to take off.
I am again and again amazed by how the kids catch on. Slow and steady wins the race.
You must have your child practice reading the words accurately and give them the support needed until they are more successful.
As we all know, in today’s day and age, it can be hard to focus and do hard things. I am constantly telling my kids to tell their brains to remember the previous chunk, so they can link the two chunks together. This verbal cue can help them a lot.
Of course, we have to use good judgment and adapt based on the need of the kids. But I always require my students to repeat and watch me as they go. They can do this, and this allows learning to take place. I have also found it builds confidence.
Here is a video that models how to teach blending. It also shows how I have the kids use their hands as models. This sensory input typically allows the child to do it more successfully. After modeling to my students, they will start using the strategy independently.
Summary
Blending is an important skill to develop to become a fluent successful reader. It is vital to ensure your child understands how the letters in words are linked together. If your child does not know, you can point and say, “This says __.” and then move forward. The more they read, the less support you will have to give them. Remember to provide a challenge but not an overwhelming one. To see this in action and hear some additional tips watch this video.