From Sound by Sound Blending to Automatic Word Reading
In the early stages of teaching children how to read, there is an emphasis on building the alphabetic principle. Understanding the alphabetic principle is an essential early literacy skill, meaning, children need it in order to learn how to read.
The alphabetic principle comprises two factors:
Matching spoken phonemes (speech sounds) to letters in print.
The ability to blend those speech sounds together to read the whole word.
Helping children develop an understanding of the alphabetic principle requires a focus on connecting symbol (letters) to sound (phonemes), and ensuring students know the meaning of the word they are trying to decode (this is phonics).
It’s exciting when we see our students in action, tapping the sounds and blending them together to decode the word. It means they’re getting it! But this is just a stepping stone to where we really want kids to be– which is reading words without having to sound them out, instantaneously, without effort. This is called “sight recognition”, and happens once children have had enough practice with decoding, encoding (spelling), and learning the meanings of words.
So, how do we get them there? What about those children who are stuck and still sounding out every word they encounter?
Today I want to share four tips for moving kids from sound by sound blending to reading whole words effortlessly.
Tip 1: Shhhhhh!
Sounding out words is a scaffold that eventually needs to be removed. Sometimes children are so accustomed to sounding out words (as are teachers!), that we get into the habit of this being the norm. The first thing we can do to help kids let go of that habit is encourage kids to say the sounds silently in their minds instead of out loud. This simple strategy can be enough for some kids, and it also helps them hear themselves successfully reading words without sounding them out. Feeling successful is sometimes half the battle! A middle school student of mine recently experienced this “magic” for the first time. It was a proud moment for both of us.
Tip 2: Successive or Additive Blending
Sometimes the problem is a bit different, and has more to do with what is happening in the phonological working memory. This is especially important to consider for our dyslexic students, as a “phonological core deficit” can be a common characteristic of dyslexia. What does this mean? Have you ever had a student who says each sound in a word, then when recoding (reading the word after they say the sounds) the word they:
Say a completely different word
Say the sounds in a different order.
Say the previous word they sounded out.
Add in or omit a sound.
If any of the above has happened for your students, successive blending might be the way to go. Successive blending helps students connect, or blend the first two sounds in a word, which often is where the “mix up” happens. Once students hear themselves saying the first two sounds blended, adding that last sound and recoding the correct word comes naturally.
To teach successive blending, first model for students how to touch and say the first sound, then say the first two sounds together, then add on the last sound.
Ex) /c/, /ca/, cat. Then, practice the strategy together, supporting students with extra modeling if need be.
Successive blending is imperative for some students who struggle to hold the correct sounds in order in their phonological working memory. It can be the antidote to keeping the phonemes in a word “tidy” in the brain, so students can recode the word correctly. If you need a resource to support you in teaching successive blending, these print and go successive blending mats will set you up for success. See what I did there?
Tip 3: Continuous blending or Continuous Phonation
Continuous blending is very similar to successive blending but can only be used in words with continuous sounds. Continuous sounds are sounds that can be sung or held onto, such as /m/, /s/, /n/, or /f/. All vowels are also continuous sounds. To teach continuous blending, first model for students how to sing the sounds in a word. Then practice the strategy together.
Ex) Display a CVC word to model continuous blending with. The word must start with a continuous sound. Touch the first letter and sing the sound, then, without taking a breath, move right into the next sound as you touch the next letter, and move right into the final sound as you touch the last letter. If the word is “mat”, it would sound/look like this:
Deep breath in….
/mmmmmmmmmmm/ /aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/ /ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt/
Then, with a different word, ask students to try it with you. Ask them to take a deep breath in and sing the first, then second, and final sound without pausing between sounds. Sometimes the pause between sounds is the barrier that kids need removed in order to “unlock” or blend the word correctly.
Tip 4: Word Level Fluency
My final tip for you is for children who don’t struggle to organize sounds, or recode correctly, yet are still reading sound by sound. This tip is for children who might be sounding out in their head, but nonetheless still need to sound the words out. Choose a handful of words that contain the PGCs (phoneme grapheme correspondences) you’ve previously taught. Let’s say you’re working on words with consonant digraphs. You might choose these words:
Shop
Ship
Chop
Chin
Much
Have students read these five words five times through, in a different order each time. This repetition allows students to hear themselves reading fluently, because once they get to round three, they no longer have to sound the words out. You can either do this with flashcards, or use these print-and-go fluency grids by Savannah Campbell.
These are the tricks I tend to pull out when my students are stuck on sound by sound blending. Remember, sounding out words is an EXCELLENT and important scaffold as we are helping students understand the alphabetic principle. Students need to hear themselves say the sounds out loud to help them blend and read the word correctly. But, sounding out words can’t stick around forever, and I am hopeful these strategies will help your students move from emerging to fluent readers. What would you add to this list? I’d love to know what has worked for you!
