Ever try to teach your children to blend letter sounds to no avail? It can be quite a mountain to climb to teach letter blending, especially after you just spent the past 2 years teaching them individual letter names then individual letter sounds. Our daughter,Shelby, has been trying to teach our grandson, Ollie, how to blend, but it has had its' challenges and frustrations. After talking through it with her, I thought this blog may help her and some of you. Ollie knows all his letter name and letter sounds, but when he tries to blend he often says /ca-a/ making 2 sounds instead of /ca/, which is the desired singular sound. Let's explore together some ways to help Ollie and your children/grandchildren, who may be having the same struggles. PLEASE, however, do not think you can skip the steps of learning the individual letter names and individual letter sounds, even though they can temporarily hinder the quick learning of blends. The blog About Learning provides some important reasons for LEARNING LETTER NAMES. I have listed those below:
1. Start with the Child’s Name 2. Teach Similar Sounds at Different Times 3. Teach Multiple Letters at a Time 4. Teach the Correct Letter Sounds 5. Play Games and Have Fun 6. Keep Reading So now that those two hurdles have been conquered, let's hit the blend trail!!! Notice in the picture above that Shelby has Ollie in her lap while they work on their blends. This is one of many ways to work, but the important thing is to made sure you can hear their attempts very clearly. It is easy for a child to say the letter sounds individually, but until they can blend letters smoothly they will be lacking in their ability to read a complete word and to master fluency. If you hear them separating the sounds of a blend, then you need to keep working. The picture below shows an effective tools for learning blends. The picture is of a Blend Ladder from Abeka Books. These cards are large and can be displayed in a classroom or homeschool room. You work with the child by blending a particular consonant with all of the various vowels. When I was a kindergarten teacher, we had a blast with these. We would clap them, sing them, spin to them, 'jumping jack' to them, etc., etc. Your child may be copying you when you say them together, but repetition and modeling are effective tools. You can also use these ladders for testing to see what they do and do not know. In order to assess them, you must allow them say the blend ladder alone from time to time and listen carefully. The second set of blend cards focuses on the consonant blends. Shelby is using this type of blend ladder in the picture above. These cards are more advanced, but I wanted you to see them because they are the next step after the simples blends of a consonant with a short vowel. Your child does not have to read all of the words in this set of blend ladders, but try to get them to say the initial blend (pl-) over and over to increase their ability to blend and increase their recognition of common blends (like /pl/, /bl/ /tr/, etc.). All blend learning will help them with fluency as well. Another fun activity Shelby has come up with is to make her own blend charts on a white or black board. This is excellent for a variety of reasons: 1. You can change the consonants and/or vowels to target the ones your child still needs to master. 2. Your child can be involved in drawing the letters, which will help them with letter names (as they hear you say which one you want them to write) as well as improve their writing skills. 3. The children will also clearly see that although these are two separate letters, we are blending them into one sound. There is a video for parents/teachers who are teaching blends called SMOOTH PHONICS. Check it out. It is very basic, but I love that term 'Smooth Phonics'. Individual sounds are choppy, but we want to see our children smoothly blend two letters into one sound. Watch Ollie trying to blend in the video blow. It sounds here like he has mastered blending. However Shelby said she had to help him a lot, and then he just started memorizing them. This may feel frustrating, but at least we know that Ollie hears that it is one sound and not two. Remember, the way you will really know if they are getting it is to test them to see if they have mastered blending or have just memorized the previous examples. Using the black or white board allows you to change the consonants for testing purposes or you can just alternate the Abeka charts after they master one. If they are guessing or unable to blend, don't give up. Regroup, re-tool if needed, and make sure you persevere. They will get it in time. Prayers helps too! I have seen the Lord bring understanding where I and all my cool methods were failing :) I do also want to bring it to your attention that there are some thoughts and conclusions in academic literature about the best way to construct blends with C-V-C (consonant-vowel-consonant) words (e.g. bat, hit, run). I would be remiss not to inform you about this issue.
Here are the options: (CV-C) ba-t be-t bi-t bo-t bu-t OR (C-VC) t-ab t-eb t-ib t-ob t-ub As you can see, the structure of every language either promotes the blending of the first consonant with the vowel or the vowel is blended with the second consonant. This is called CV-C or C-VC (consonant vowel sub-syllables or vowel consonant sub-syllables). In my linguistic PhD courses, I learned that the sub-syllable breakdown varies language by language depending on the natural breakdown of words in each particular language. A prominent linguist, Ester Geva, studied this phenomenon for the Hebrew language by asking Hebrew speakers how they naturally break down C-V-C (consonant-vowel-consonant) words in their language. Because most Hebrew words are accented on the second syllable, the native speakers of Hebrew overwhelmingly broke the words into a CV-C sub-syllable. What do you think the C-V-C sub-syllable breakdown will be for English?? An academic study by Brent Kessler and Rebecca Treiman evaluated the statistical syllable breakdown in an English language dictionary to help them make their determination for English spelling. The data was overwhelming for a C-VC sub-syllable structure for English. OK, SORRY! I know this was very academic, but I said all that to say....if your child is struggling to blend, it could be how you are presenting the blends. If their language naturally breaks the sub-syllable in a different way than you are teaching them, it may sound unfamiliar and awkward to their ear. Try the opposite method, and you may have more success. My children learned to read using the Abeka reading curriculum. I still stand by Abeka although they teach the blend contrary to the natural tendency of the English language. Why do I still recommend Abeka curriculum for reading, you may ask??...because it worked for my children, who were all fluent readers by grade 1. It is hard to argue with success, but please don't tell my Linguistics PhD professors....hahaha! LORD, HELP US TO ADD EACH VITAL BUILDING BLOCK TO OUR CHILDREN'S READING TOOLS. GIVE US WISDOM IN THE AREAS WHERE THEY STRUGGLE UNTIL THEY MASTER THEM. WE CAN DO IT ONLY WITH YOUR HELP! AMEN!!!
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