Blending Sounds

Blending sounds is when students fluently join phonemes together to make a word.

Successive blending is the most effective blending technique (as research shows here). This is where students “stretch out” the sounds in a continuous manner instead of isolating each sound.

Examples of blending with the word mat:

• In isolated blending the students say, “/m/ /a/ /t/ mat” (saying each sound separately)
• In successive blending the students say, “mmmaaat mat” (stretching each sound to be continuous to the next sound)

Successive blending helps students “hold” the sounds in their brain, because how many times have we blended with our students and they have no idea what word they sounded out and shout out random words (guilty and so frustrated 😣). 

In this video you can hear the students “stretching” their sounds in a continuous way to blend the whole word (this was an intervention group who needed more scaffolding so we blended the first two sounds then blending all three sounds).

Grab these blending slides HERE.

A few blending tips:

• practice stretching words without letters (yes I’m referencing phonological awareness from part one in this series)
• show one sound at a time, not the whole word (as you can see in the video)
• practice, practice, practice…this skills doesn’t come over night so do it during your phonemic awareness time (without the letters) AND during your phonics time EVERY DAY
• use a sound box mat and phoneme tiles or toy cars or things that move for that added kinesthetic movement, having students move their fingers or their objects across the mat as they blend
• use PICTURES, yes it’s okay to give them the “answer” through a picture (as you see in the video-after we blend we see the picture in case we couldn’t do it or to confirm our word)
• If your students are really struggling, make sure you are doing phonemic awareness everyday, this will make a huge difference

Try a few blending slides for free by joining the email series! 👇👇👇

For access to all the exclusive freebies, join the “5 Days to Better Phonics Instruction” email series.

Read more in the series…

Part 1 Phonological Awareness

Part 2 Blending (you are here)

Part 3 Phonics Practice-email series only

Part 4 Intervention-email series only