The best blending skill for reading is successive blending. Kiddos say the first two sounds in a word and immediately blend those two sounds together. Then, they say the third sound and immediately blend that sound with the first two blended sounds. Using successive blending is the best blending skill for reading that will make future reading easier.

 

Who Needs the Best Blending Skill

I was talking to a friend about her daughter reading, and she was hissing and spitting (it’s what some teachers call it.) So what that means is, the child never learned to “blend” the words. Teaching kiddos to put the first two sound together helps.

Segmenting First 

First segment words, break apart the sounds /c/ /a/  /t/ . That’s really important to make sure the correct sounds are known but you also want to make sure that you teach how to blend the sounds back together. 

Then Blending

After you say that first sound, you don’t want to stop until you say the next sound. You have to go “caaaaa” and if you make those sounds touch, that will really help those students, especially when they get into multi-syllabic words; words that are really big.

Once they say ca as 1 sound add the t. /ca/ /t/ Then say it faster. cat

Teaching kiddos to focus on the 1st 2 sounds is the perfect way to blend for beginning readers and especially for kiddos that have memory issues; they only have to remember 2 chunks at a time.

Why to Teach the Best Blending Skill

When asking kiddos to decode a CVC word, we are asking them to first recall the sounds (phonemes) for the three letters, and then hold the individual sounds in their memory before going back to blend the sounds together in the correct sequence. Not only are we asking them to blend, we are asking them to remember each phoneme in the correct sequence which can be so difficult.

Therefore, some kiddos can’t make the connection between a seemingly random string of sounds and an actual word they are trying to read.

So if you have a kid that is hissing and spitting, make sure you teach them that they have to blend those sounds back together. It is a skill that must be practiced!
💖Debora

Other Best Blending Ideas