What is blending for reading?

By Ava Jones

Almost the opposite of Segmenting for Spelling! When we're looking at how to read, we want to identify the individual sounds in a word before we bring them together to decide what the word might be.

Along with segmenting, blending is a crucial skill that new readers develop early on in their phonics learning journey.

Blending is the skill of pushing together multiple sounds to make a word. When children learn phonics, they’re taught to recognise individual letter sounds (phonemes).

If a child can recognise the sounds made by individual graphemes, they can then join them smoothly to read a whole word.

For example, the sounds /c/ – /a/ – /t/ blend together to make the word cat.

As an adult you’ll even use a technique like blending when you encounter words you don’t recognise. Think of a new word, such as ‘gelidity‘. You may or may not know the word, but you can make a good guess at how it is pronounced, because you know how each of the letters and graphemes within it are pronounced when broken down!

Why does blending matter?

It is one of the most important early reading skills. It helps children:

Move from decoders into readers. They will go from sounding out words to being able to recognise them automatically.
Build confidence and fluency in their reading.
Hear how the letters they read make the sounds they hear and how they work together in real words.
Develop their spelling skills as they become familiar with the words, the sounds that appear within them and the order they follow.

How are children taught to blend?

They Learn Sounds

Children learn the sounds that each letter/letter combination makes. For example, the letter ‘s’ makes the “sss” sound.

Blending Sounds

Children practice putting these sounds together to smoothly read words. For example, they will blend /d/ /o/ /g/ to read “dog”.

Practising Words

They will start with easy words and move onto harder ones, practicing blending each sound to read the full word. Practice makes perfect!

Keep Practising

They then keep practicing over and over until they can blend lots of words easily, becoming better readers step by step.

How can I support my child learning to blend?

There are lots of ways you can support your child’s phonics learning journey.

Make sure you use the pure phonics sounds. Say /m/ not ‘muh’, /s/ not ‘suh’, /c/ not ‘cuh’ and so on.

Here are some quick games to play on the way to school!

Sound Practise: say each letter/sound of a word slowly. Ask a child to put them together and tell you the word they spell.
Robot Talk: Get them to think of a word and split out each of its sounds like a robot, then say the word normally – “/s/ /u/ /n/ sun!”
Stretch and Squash: stretch out a word slowly (“sssuuunnnn”) and then squash it back together (“sun”).

Start with short CVC words, like ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘sun’, ‘pat’.

You can read their favourite books together, pointing out words to segment and blend.

Play phonics games such as ‘I spy’ to help solidify the letter-sound relationship.

Create flashcards with simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words like ‘cat’ to then practise segmenting/blending the sounds in the chosen word.

Continue to get them to think about the sounds in the words they use. Which ones do they think rhyme or sound like other words? Ask them to hunt around the house or outdoors, to find items specific item starting with the /b/ sound for example.

Celebrate their success! Blending can take lots of practice and their confidence will grow with each success.