What is blending?

Phonics is the prime approach for teaching children to read. Once your child knows some sounds, they can begin to blend. 

Blending is when we say the individual sounds and then push them together to read the word.

Oral Blending

Blending can be tricky at first because there are lots of steps. Your child needs to recognise the letters, know what sound they represent, sound out the word, hold the sounds in their head and then push them together to make a word.

Before we teach children to blend the letters they can see, it helps if we teach them to blend the sounds they can hear. This is called oral blending.

You can develop oral blending skills every day as part of your daily routine. Sound talk a word and model how to blend it immediately afterwards. Remember to say each sound in the word rather than each letter e.g. t-ee-th not t-e-e-t-h.

Let's brush our t-ee-th, teeth. It's time for b-e-d, bed.

Blending to Read

In Reception, children begin to match letters to sounds and then blend them to read words.

Children learn that two letters can work together to make one sound e.g. ck, ff, ll, ss. This is called a digraph.

Sound Lines

We use sound lines to help children spot digraphs within a word so they say each sound rather than each letter e.g. p-a-ck not p-a-c-k.

Dot = a single letter making one sound

Line = two/three letters working together to make one sound.

Progression:

Reception:

Phase 2 - covered during the first term

Children blend CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) using single sounds and some digraphs e.g. ck, ff, ll, ss.

Phase 3 - generally covered during the second term

Children blend CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) containing digraphs and trigraphs e.g. shop (sh-o-p), goat (g-oa-t) and fish (f-i-sh).

Phase 4 - generally covered during the last term

Children blend words with adjacent consonants where two consonants are next to each other but making their own sounds e.g. lost (l-o-s-t) and float (f-l-oa-t). They begin to blend longer words with more than one syllable e.g. treetop.

Year 1:

Phase 5a

Children blend words containing new graphemes. These GPCs sound the same but look different to GPCs they learnt during Reception e.g. ow in down (d-ow-n) and ou in sound (s-ou-n-d).

Phase 5b

Children blend words containing alternative pronunciations. These GPCs look the same but sound different e.g. g in get and gem.

Resources

Click the pictures below to download word lists.