Help with blending? (phonics)

[jennilv2003]

Is there anything that helps to teach blending? My 5yo ds is awesome at all the individual sounds but struggles with making them into a word. Has anyone found anything that helps this?

[hsmom]

Lots and lots of practice.

 

My son when he was 5 was great at the individual sounds, but just struggled at putting them together. After lots and lots of practice and pacients he is blending like a pro.

 

He will get it, just give him time.

[ChrisB]

:iagree: Lots of practice.

[Guest]

I am so glad you asked because my 3rd son has the same problem. My solution is to give him a few more months to mature then we will try again. He is young and all mine, save one, were late bloomers. I would rather put it off for a bit than kill the love for reading before it grows.

[jennilv2003]

It is pretty hard because my ds gets frustrated so easily. He will only read a page or word one time and if I try to get him to do it again he gets upset. Maybe he just needs a little more time.:001_huh:

[Veritas4]

I have the same problem with my almost 6 year old. Do I just shelf phonics for awhile until he shows more interest. His 4 year old sister is sure picking it up, but the "competition" is not a motivator for him.

[Five More Minutes]

I found that the single thing that made the biggest difference for us was to practice hearing the individual sounds of words. We did this casually: while I was cooking, I would make a game of "guess the word" where I would say each separate sound in a word very slowly and distinctly. She loved to see how quickly she could hear words from the separate sounds, and I found that it wasn't long before she translated that to her reading.

[blondeviolin]

I'd shelve it and try again in a few months. It really is a developmental deal. You can play games such as rhyming and taking a word and saying it a sound at time in the meantime.

[lotsofpumpkins]

My oldest ds knew all of his letter sounds when he was 4, but was unable to blend them until he was almost 6. We tried several phonics programs, but what he really needed was time. Once blending "clicked" in his brain, he did fine. We were able to return to the first phonics program we had tried and pick it up where we left off.

[johnandtinagilbert]

Here's what I do and when they are developmentally ready, it takes off. It sometimes takes weeks of patience or dropping it altogether before the blending comes easily.

 

Take their index finger and have them point under (you can even hold his hand and guide the finger) one sound at a time (acknowledging each individual sound with a breath in between each sound), saying the sound. Feel free to repeat this step until they can confidently identify each sound.

cat

/k/--/a/--/t/

 

Then model that he can say the first 2 sounds, but he has to say them in one breath AND you have to hold vowel sounds for a long time (about 3 seconds)You will then slide his finger, instead of picking it up and placing it.

/kaaaa/--t

 

Now, he has to add the final sound (or slowly the 3rd sound if the word has four letters) and say it slowly 3 times

/kaat/ /kaat/ /kaat/

 

{camp would be: /kaaammm/ /kaaammm/ /kaaammm/}

 

Now, say it fast! Cat! {/kaammp/ /kamp/ Camp!}

 

That's our practice!

[ByGrace3]

this may seem overly simple, but when dd was learning to blend I told her to keep saying the first sound until she added the second (and I would run my finger under the letters). so for CAT cccccccccaaaaaattttttttttt. Sometimes I could see her little brain working and sometimes it takes a little while so letting the mouth say that first sound while the brain works on the next helps.

[coastal academy]

I really like the blend ladder. Several phonics programs use it or something like it. Basically, the vowels are listed vertically on the page. You could make this up on a small dry-erase board. Then you pick a consonant and write it in front of each vowel-

 

i.e.- ma

me

mi

mo

mu

 

And you go down the ladder blending m with each vowel. Then try it with other consonants. Something about getting the first 2 sounds down really helped. Once they can do it in one breath without pausing between the consonant and vowel, you can tag a letter on the end-

 

i-e- mat

met

mit

mot

mut

 

Sometimes they won't be reading a real word, but the point is to get them blending the sounds well. This has really helped my kids to "get going" with blending.

CS

[leann_in_tx]

The first pages of Phonics Pathways accomplished this for my four year old son. He's five now, and he can't really do much more actually - he still just reads the sound of each letter to get the word - every single time - just so you know that he's not really advanced or anything. But, what worked for him in PP is really similar to the ladder chart described above, but it's something like this:

 

a m - a ma

e m - e me

i m - i mi

 

and so on, through all the vowels, for each consonant. When that's done, it goes on to words with the last consonant.

 

a s - a sa - d sad

e s - e se - t set

 

That's all. My three year old daughter can sound out words now, just from listening to me doing it with her brother over and over. She begs to read while my son begs to stop. Go figure.

[RahRah]

My oldest ds knew all of his letter sounds when he was 4, but was unable to blend them until he was almost 6. We tried several phonics programs, but what he really needed was time. Once blending "clicked" in his brain, he did fine. We were able to return to the first phonics program we had tried and pick it up where we left off.

 

:iagree:

 

My experience too...DS knew all his letters and sounds really well, but having the "lightbulb" go off for putting them together - he just needed more time. When he (and I) were getting frustrated earlier this year, I shelved phonics for a while - we recently started again at the CVC words....and CLICK, he's progressing along nicely now!

[ange]

Working on phonemic awareness skills (we use Earobics) and ABeCeDarian helped my 7 yo get over the hump (blending).

[ElizabethB]

I would try starting with the syllables of Webster's Speller, it's much easier to blend two letters together than the commonly taught CVC words. I also would start with the easiest letters to blend.

 

The easiest letters to blend are m, n, l, and r, and long vowels are easier to blend than short vowels. They also have the advantage of being both the name and sound of the letter. In the syllabary (the start of 2 letter syllables for Webster's Speller), the syllables ending in a vowel are pronounced long, so ma and ba are pronounced long as in ma-ker and ba-ker.

 

So, here are the easiest syllables to begin with to teach blending:

 

1. ma me mi mo mu my; na ne ni no nu ny; la le li lo lu ly; ra re ri ro ru ry

(remember, the a in a syllable is long as in ma-ker, na-ture, la-kers, ra-di-ant)

 

then short vowels

2. am em im om um; an en in on un

 

It takes a lot of practice for some children before they get the blending.

 

Also, when you are blending, you the sounds you make do not exactly equal the sounds in the words. It is impossible to make a b without a bit of an uh sound. You can say less of an uh sound at the end, but you cannot make a pure b sound in isolation that matches the sound of b in a word. M, n, l, and r (l and r before the vowels, after the vowels they alter the sound of the vowel) match a lot better, that's why they're easiest to learn to blend with.

 

A good book that shows blending well is Burnz' Step by Step Primer, free from Don Potter. (P. 11 is the first page showing a "picture" of blending.) Don's copy of Blend Phonics also has good instructions for teaching blending:

 

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf_files/reading_made_easy_with_blen.pdf

 

Both my children could spell before they could blend. I worked on spelling while waiting for the blending to come along.

 

(Posted the same thing as on this blending thread.)

Edited March 24, 2011 by ElizabethB