discouraging letter by letter sounding to blend

Hi Barbara,

You’re doing great….don’t stop now. He’s going through the normal process…learning letters stand for sounds….and now trying to put them together. He probably hasn’t had to hold three things in memory at one time consistently his entire short life, so it’s hard for him.

But that’s what he’s got to do to read. His memory will improve if you keep working on sound-sound-sound-word. You have to do this because eventually he will have to go syllable-syllable-syllable-syllable-syllable-word.

There are some things that you can do to hasten the process. Play oral blending games with him. Ask him what color /g/r/ee/n/ is? or /r/e/d/, etc. When he struggles blending, try to get him to blend the first two sounds and then tack on the third. /b/u/..bu…/g/….bug.

And, if he gets it, and continues to make decent progress, stay with it. If he stalls out, hates to read, gets tired when you shove a book in his face, etc., start reading about vision issues…..Rod

Hi Barbara, I’ve been a Phono-Graphix therapist for 3 years and agree with Rod; have him do one sound, then the next, then blend, then add the 3rd. I use what I call the “hand over” method ( the kids know it by that name, too and they willing use it, because it works); it forces them to go sound-by-sound, blending each as they go. Place the child’s hand (you’ll only have to do this once; they get it right away) over the word, leaving only the first sound exposed. The word is “big,” for instance. He sees the “b”, says the sound, then uncovers the “i” and says that sound; I say “what have you got?” He says “bi”….he uncovers the last letter; I say “what have you got?” He says “big.”
The other thing I INSIST the parents of this child do is to use “car time” to practice(time in the car can be a waste, or a great thing) Just have them say the sounds in short words, like BIG, and have him listen for the word. Go on to longer words when he can. I did this with my 5 year old “grandson” for 4 or 5 months before I starting teaching him to read. Now (6 mos. after I started), he says things like “Leslie, guess this word….p…l…a…n…e…t. Wow! Not only can he hear the words I give him, but can REVERSE it. He is learning to read sooo fast, as he can blend and segment exceptionally well. Hope this helps!

Thanks, Rod and Leslie. I did a lot of oral blending with him and that helped him in finally blending 2 sounds. I haven’t tried oral blending of 3 sounds though. I only did onset and rime “b…ig” and sometimes “bi…g”. I haven’t done pure phonemes like /b/ /i/ /g/. I’ll try that next. I’ll do the handover method, too. I like that better than onset and rime.

How do you feel about one technique where the child is made to say the vowel sound first because that helps in opening his mouth, and then blending? To decode “big”, child says “/i/ big”. It works with some kids, but I wonder if it would just confuse this child who learns purely by rote and not by strategy or seeing patterns.

Hi Barbara, and leslie,

Just to be clear, when I was saying to say /g/r/ee/n/ or /r/e/d/ to the child, I meant to say the individual sounds, g…r…ee…n, etc., and see if he could blend them. The reason for asking which color it is, is that it gives him a clue. As soon as he gets the idea, you drop the clues….same thing as linda was saying…good use of car time.

As for word families and initial blends, in my opinion, teaching blends and/or word families causes more poor segmenting, and therefore, poor reading, than any other instructional practice. And don’t worry about the vowel sound; put it in words where it belongs and they will get it. I had a girl who was taught to blend “hat” as /h/../a,a,a,a/…/t/. At the risk of angering someone here who does that, it was crazy. There’s only one /a/ sound in “hat” and repeating it several times only made it harder for her to hear the word when she decoded it. The same would seem to apply to /i/../big/, so I would not do it.

As for blends and word families, just teach blending accurately and they will tend to take care of themselves. One thing you can do along this line however, is to get in the habit of saying /a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/ together a lot (the short vowels sounds.) Then point out that a/e/i/o/u (say the short vowel sounds, not the letter names) keep showing up in the same places….that is, they are a class of sounds that behave similarly. Most CVC words, and CCVC and CCCVC are a/e/i/o/u words as are word ending in ck, dge, and tch, for instance. This will do them a lot more good than word families in the long run, and will confuse them a lot less….Rod

Yes, perfectly normal stage.

Just when the system is working, don’t quit because it isn’t magically doing a year’s work in a week!! It is absolutely normal to take weeks or even months to learn blending. If he can do it by the end of the school year, great. If he can do it by the end of next school year, well, he is *still* well ahead of the average (which says a lot about low expectations on average).

The reversal is a problem; it happens,. but make absolutely sure it doesn’t become a habit and get ingrained. Stop him and immediately correct him.

Pulling out the vowel sound first is probably very counter-productive. You want to stress order and method, order and method. Visually, order left to right, period. Verbally, say the sounds of the word in order, period. The sounds of the word match the symbols written. If not, confusion ensues. This can actually cause more reversal problems as well as mistaken identity of sound-symbol matches.

I teach blending using a lot of modelling and scaffolding. I point to the letter/group and wait a few seconds for the student to say the sound. If he doesn’t, I say it and have him say it with me. Then I point to the next one and do the same. Then I say the two sounds blended and point to the third.
b……b-i ……bi….bi - g……big
Yes, this is slow, very slow. It is only a temporary stage, however. After a few weeks to a few months of seeing how blending works, the student starts to do it for himself. At first he reads tremendously slowly, one word in two or three seconds or more, maybe 20 or 30 wpm. NO PROBLEM! He is reading, and he knows how the system works. The rest is developing skill and automatism; the speed picks up as the vocabulary increses and blending becomes an automatic habit.