Early Blending in Reading Instruction: How to Start Sooner
A common belief held by many teachers (including myself many years ago), is that students need to master most or all letter sounds before they begin reading words. In reality, early blending in reading instruction can begin much sooner with a very small set of sounds.
Starting With a Few Letters
Students do not need the full alphabet mastered to begin reading simple words. As soon as they can recall a small group of consonants and at least one vowel, they can start blending!
Most curricula scope & sequence follow similar flow for teaching letter/sounds (I’m a fan of UFLI, so here’s that scope & sequence). In UFLI, sounds for a m s t are taught first. Once students get through these 4 letters, students can begin blending!
Oral Blending
Blending sounds orally can be a quick activity that still teaches students to blend when they get to letters. In phonemic awareness, students are practicing hearing individual sounds and putting them together to make a word, without letters. Oral blending can be a quick few words before you continue on to adding letters, it doesn’t have to take more than a minute of your lesson!
If we start with the first 4 letters learned (a m s t), here’s what it would look like:
teacher: m-a-t (giving a quick pause between each sound)
students: mat (put it all together, say the word)
teacher: a-t
students: at
teacher: s-a-t
students: sat
That will take all of 30 seconds, then head into the blending WITH letters portion of the lesson because there is so much power in linking sounds with letters, so we want to quickly get to the good stuff. Of course it never goes perfectly, but there’s more on phonemic awareness and ideas here!
Letter Blending
Using those same four letters, students can even start blending words!
I’ve got a video to show you how this can look. This can be done with preset blending slides or by hand writing each letter. I do both, depending on the situation (usually small group I just write it, whole group I use preset slides).
please excuse their unclipped /y/ sound
As students learn a new letter/sound, it should immediately be added to their blending practices.
Read more on how to teach and best practices for blending here!
Why Early Blending Matters
Students do not need to finish learning all the alphabet sounds before they begin reading. They need just enough sounds to start blending!
When blending begins early:
-students see immediate payoff from phonics instruction
-memory for letter sounds strengthen through use
-reading growth accelerates because practice starts sooner
