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Blending letter–sounds
(‘Sounding out’ words by identifying letter–sounds and blending them together)
The teacher:
• provides students with opportunities to identify the number of sounds in a word, using
a block (or other concrete materials) to represent each sound. This assists students to
connect their knowledge of phonemic awareness to letter–sound learning. The concrete
materials are later replaced by graphemes (letter or letter-combination)
• activates students’ prior knowledge of oral blending, eg ‘We will blend like we did with
sounds but this time the letters will tell us which sounds to say, and join together’
• explicitly models blending, eg the teacher says ‘Look at this word. We know the sounds
for these letters. I’ll say them as I point to them, SSSS … aaaaa … mmmm. I’m going
to point faster and I’ll slide the sounds together to make the word … Sam’
• models reading targeted letter–sounds in different positions in a word
• provides sufficient opportunities to practise blending words to support fluency and the
automatic recognition of words and word-parts
• provides opportunities for students to manipulate letters in words, to assist them to be
aware of how their letter–sound knowledge and phonemic awareness can assist them
to read and write new words
• asks students to produce a sentence using the word they have blended to assist them
to link the orthographic representation with the meaning of the word (DET)
• teaches rules for common patterns in words, such as:
– the ‘silent e rule’ for vce pattern words (eg ‘an
e
following a vowel and a consonant
at the end of a word tells us that we should say the letter name (long vowel)
for the vowel before. The
e
at the end is silent. Let’s use the rule /
r
/ o /
p
/ e.
The word is
rope
’)
– later introduces words that are exceptions to letter–sound relationships rules
(eg break), or contain uncommon letter patterns (eg fuel, ceiling)
• provides numerous opportunities for students to apply their knowledge of letter–sound
relationships to reading and writing, for example:
– sorting words according to the position of sounds
– reading books/stories (CIERA 2002)
– spelling words
– writing activities
• reinforces that each sound in a word is represented by a letter, or combination of letters
and that sounds can be represented in more than one way. The order of the graphemes
in words helps to determine how a letter–sound is said.
• demonstrates the reversibility of blending and segmenting to assist students to apply
their knowledge of letter–sound relationships to both reading and spelling (Rose 2006).
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Support Materials for Students with Special Education Needs
English K–6
R
eading
IMPLEMENTATION