Students acquire the ability to blend parts of words (syllables) before they are able to blend individual sounds (phonemes). For this purpose, the skill of syllable blending is taught before sound blending. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to develop your student's understanding of blending. As you read, consider which of these interventions best align with your student's strengths and needs in the whole learner domains.
Explicit Instruction
If you are intervening to support your students' ability to blend words, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:
Activity A: Syllable Blending
Tell the student two syllables and ask children to put the syllables together to form a word. “Blend these [syllables, or] word parts and make a word: Car/los, va/ca/tion.” [Carlos, vacation]
Syllable Blending in Action
Watch this clip to see how to execute Syllable Blending. Notice how the teacher slows down her speech so the student can clearly hear each syllable.
O'Connor, R. (2014). Teaching word recognition: Effective strategies for students with learning difficulties. (2nd ed.) New York: Guilford Press.
Henry, M. (2010). Unlocking literacy: Effective decoding & spelling instruction (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD.: P.H. Brookes.
YouTube. (2019). Phonemic Awareness. Blending Sounds in Syllables with Autumn, Kindergartner, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFw9cEEXjLE
Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a lesson about how to blend syllables together to form a word:
Teacher: "Blend the following syllables to form a word, hot and dog."
Student: "Hot. Dog. Hog. The word is hog."
In such a case, what might you do?
When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout the activity. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and students respond differently to different types of feedback.
| Level of Support | Description of Scaffold | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest scaffold | Try again! Allows student multiple opportunities to practice new skill. In this case, you are trying to determine what type of error the student is making. Is the student only attending to the final sound and then guessing the word because he didn't hear the rest, or is the student not able to do this skill? | "Let's see if you can blend the syllables again. Make sure to listen to each one and then put them together to form a new word." |
| Medium scaffold | Provide resources. Allows the student to use resources to figure out the answer (including helpful supports such as a visual cue or a prompt)
|
"Try blending the syllables again. You heard the first and the last sounds in the words, but not the whole syllables. Can you blend them again? |
| Highest scaffold | Model, Lead, Test, Retest. Model for the student using this gradual release correction procedure adopted from Carnine, D.W., Silbert, J., Kame'enui, E. J. & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (4th Ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. | 1. Teacher says the correct answer."Hot and dog. Hotdog." 2. Teacher models: "My turn. Blend hot and dog"(Signal.) "Hotdog." 3. Teacher leads: "Let's do it together. Blend hot and dog"(Signal.) "Hotdog." (Teacher responds with the students.) 4. Teacher tests: "Your turn. Blend hot and dog"(Signal.) "Hotdog." |
If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try to adjust the activity to your student's needs.
| Activity | Description of strategy | Script |
| Syllable Blending | Known words. Give students words they are familiar with before less common words | "We'll start with some familiar words. /ha/ /ppy/. What word?" |
| Shorten it or lengthen it! Give students shorter words to blend (two syllables instead of three). As you are asking the student to blend, make the sounds drag out, or shorten them, depending on what supports the students need. Lengthen the sounds if the students are not attending to a certain sound, and shorten the sounds if the student is not able to put all the sounds together. | "Let's try this word: /ha//ppy/ What word? Now, /ha/ /ppi/ /est/ What word?" | |
| Make it Move. Use hand motions (such as pushing your hands together, like you are pushing the sounds together) when blending sounds as a visual cue. You can also have the students "tap out" the sounds they hear on their fingers. | "Watch as I move my hands together as I push the sounds together to form a word. (Hands far apart) sssss (hands come closer together) aaaaa (hands about 6 inches apart) ttttttt (hands touch). Sat." |