Jj is for Jottings 77.  Blending Sounds: A Simple Game For Everyday Life.

What is Blending?

Blending is “pushing” individual sounds or syllables together to make a word.  In early stages of reading the child will be blending sounds, but as they progress and begin to recognise chunks of words, they will also be blending syllables.  Knowing the sound-letter links isn’t frightfully useful unless the child can blend sounds into words.  Children generally find it easier to blend the sounds said by someone else than the sounds they say themselves, so it is best to begin at that level.  It can be very helpful to accompany blending with smooth hand movements, to add another sensory dimension.

A Simple Game You Can Incorporate into Daily Life.

Step 1.

When children have difficulty in learning a new task, you need to break the task into the smallest possible steps, and this usually involves modelling as the first step.  In the case of blending sounds you might feed in examples such as:

/m-ee/ = “me”

/b-ee/ = “bee”

/b-a-t/ = “bat”

/b-ie-k/ = “bike”

/s-u-n/ = “sun” etc., beginning with 2 or 3 sounds.  Remember that 2 or 3 sounds does not necessarily mean 2 or 3 letters, as is clear from some of these examples.  For more on this topic see:

https://educatingalpacas.com/one-letter-doesnt-always-equal-one-sound/

(Remember that whatever comes between the slashes (//) refers to sounds rather than letter names.)

Step 2.

The next step is to have them blend the sounds together, but in a context that gives them a great deal of support.  In this case it is the language context that gives the support.  Some examples:

“Why don’t you go outside and ride your /b-ie-k/?”

“We’ve run out of milk.  I’ll have to go out in the /c-ar/ to the /sh-o-p/ to get some.”

As the child becomes more confident you can separate longer words into individual sounds for them to blend:

“I’m getting the /w-o-sh-i-ng/ (that’s how it would sound) off the line.”

“We’re having /s-p-ə-g-e-t-ee/ for dinner.” (That’s “spaghetti”.)  For an explanation of how to pronounce /ə/, see this article: https://educatingalpacas.com/schwa-the-undercover-vowel/

Be aware that, as the words become longer, they are more likely to have the schwa vowel in them.  If you don’t say each sound as you hear it in the word, it will be much more difficult to blend.

Step 3.

Once your child can blend sounds within a sentence easily, then remove the support and just have them blend words – again, short words at first, and then increasing the length.

When they are able to blend nonsense words you are inventing on the spot, then they really have this stage nailed.

Special Note.

Many children with speech, language or literacy problems have difficulty in detecting the second sound in a consonant cluster eg. /sp/ – they disregard the /p/ when blending.  So if you said /s-p-i-t/ they might say “sit”.  You may need to spend some time concentrating on this level.  There’ll be an article on consonant clusters at a later date.

We’ll discuss how to assist children blending the sounds they have said themselves next time.

 

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