Blending and Segmenting Sounds to Instill Phoneme Awareness

One activity is segmenting sounds and then blending them together using both real words and nonsense words. This activity gives students practice manipulating phenomes and is consistent with the research supporting stimulation of both posterior processing systems (McCandliss, Cohen, & Dehaene, 2003).

Another activity is oral blending and segmenting paired with letters. This process may help students practice the alphabetic principle (the establishment of a correspondence between a phoneme and a written symbol). Here is an example of segmenting: “Say the first sound in ‘run,’ then say each sound separately. Say the word without the /n/ sound. Say ‘run’ without the /r/ sound.” An example of blending would be: “Say ‘ap’. Put /n/ in front of ‘ap’ and say the new word, ‘nap.’ ” Using individual blackboards or dry-erase boards with teacher modeling on a large dry-erase board makes blending and segmenting a fun writing/reading activity. Body or hand movements make auditory tasks more visible and have the potential to stimulate multiple sensory intake areas for greater memory and connection to learning style preference (especially for kinesthetic learners). For example, after fi rst modeling the activity, ask students to open/close hands or take a step forward or backward when they hear individual sounds in words you say as you put vocal emphasis on the phonemes.

Judy Willis, Teaching the Brain to Read: Strategies for Improving Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension (2008)

• literacy
• reading
• teaching