If you missed it, in this blog post and on my previous podcast, I talked about how we set our students up for reading success by giving them a solid foundation of letter names and sounds. I went over how to teach letter names and sounds and discussed how important it is for students to have that automaticity when it comes to letters. And while this is all good and well, we know that letter names and sounds aren’t the end goal - decoding (actual reading) is the end goal. And so it begs the question: How do we take our students from letter-sound knowledge to blending CVC words?

So your students are automatic with their letter sounds - yay! Now you know the next step: tackling those CVC words. Sounds easy, right? Well, it’s actually a bit complicated. Let’s look at an example of a CVC word and break it down so we can see why it’s a bit harder than you’d think. Take the word bug, for example. It’s a consonant-vowel-consonant word with a short u in the middle. When you read the word bug, I’m willing to bet you didn’t have any difficulty. Why is that? For you, bug is a sight word - there are plenty of words you don’t have to decode. But for students, it’s a bit more complicated.

The first thing they have to do is look at the word and understand that the word reads from left to right. Then, they have to look at each letter and know the name. Next, they have to understand the corresponding sounds. Once they say the sounds in their head, they have to blend them back together in order to read it. This is not easy for new readers! So how do we help students make the transition from letter-sound knowledge to CVC reading? Let’s dive in!

The Importance of Phonemic Awareness

When it comes to word reading, students need to understand how to separate words out and blend them back together. When they finally understand this process, blending is the skill that becomes the most important. When students read the word sound by sound, they're naturally segmenting them. But in order to read, they have to blend them. And despite the fact that you’ve been practicing this skill orally in your warm ups, it may still not come easy for students. Blending words orally is much easier than blending in print. When they see it in print, we’re adding to their cognitive load because now we’re asking them to look at the print, segment, and blend them back together.

It’s good for us as teachers to be aware of what's happening in their brains when we ask them to do a task like blending. Asking students to look at the print, segment, and then blend is a heavy cognitive load! When we understand why this can be difficult for students, it helps our teaching - and our patience. The good news is, we can help them! When we take our sound knowledge and put that with letters, our students will be more successful. We need to ensure we are allowing them tons of time to manipulate these sounds at the oral level because the truth is, if they can’t do it orally, they won’t be able to do it in print. And we must set them up for success. Once we know our students can blend and segment orally, it’s then we can move on to blending.

Helpful and Effective Blending Tips

Use Elkonin Boxes

Supplies: Elkonin boxes (three of them for CVC words), and manipulatives (chips, mini erasers, Unifix cubes, etc.)
Students push a chip up into each box for each sound they hear. This is done orally first.
Teacher: “Our word is cat. Can you push one chip into the box for each sound you hear?”
Students push up one chip into the first box and say /c/, one chip into the second box and say /a/, and another into the last box and say /t/. “/c/ /a/ /t/. Cat!”
Then, move on to adding print into the activity by replacing the first chip with a magnetic letter of the beginning sound.
Teacher: “The word is cat.”
Students push up the c letter and say /c/, push up the second chip and say /a/, and push up the last chip and say /t/. “/c/ /a/ /t/. Cat!”
The next time you do the activity, add in a magnetic a, and then eventually a t so that all of the chips are replaced by magnetic letters.

Begin With Continuous Sounds

Continuous sounds are sounds that can be held, like the letter M /mmmm/ and N /nnnnn/. Sounds that “stop and pop” are letters like T /t/ and P /p/.
List of continuous sounds: A, E, F, I, L, M, N, O, R, S, U, V, Z
When students read words with continuous sounds, they can hold onto those sounds better than the “pop and stop” sounds. This helps them remember the sound.
When working with continuous sounds, you can do CVC words, CV words, or VC words.
Here are some examples of CVC, CV, and VA words and nonsense words that use continuous sounds:

Three continuous sounds: mmmaaannn man.
Stop sound at the end: mmmaaat mat.
Vowel and consonant: aaap ap.
Consonant and vowel: mmmaaa ma.

Use Successive Blending

When we do successive blending, we are giving them a scaffold by having them work with a pyramid (see examples below). This helps struggling students start small.
At the top of the pyramid, we have the first letter. Then on the second level, we have the first letter and second letter. Finally at the bottom of the pyramid, we have the entire CVC word.
Students start at the top of the pyramid, put their finger under the letter, and say the sound. Then repeat this exercise with the remaining lines.
This way, they only need to hold on to one sound at a time.

These helpful tips can encourage your students to become automatic with blending and feeling confident with reading CVC words. Remember that the two most important skills we can provide for our students are blending and segmenting. Though we start doing this orally, we want to be sure we are applying these skills to print as soon as we can. My hope is that these tips can take you there as easily as A-B-C!