Before we decide to take up valuable instruction time to teach a skill or concept, it is critical to gauge its value. WHY am I teaching this and HOW will my students benefit from this? Today I’m discussing whether or not there is value in teaching consonant blends.
Is teaching blends necessary?
One school of thought is NO, it’s not. If you are teaching explicit phonics, and your students can segment and blend the phonemes in a word with automaticity when they look at the graphemes, they are already blending regardless of how those graphemes are classified. They do not need to know that, for example, the letters s + l are a blend in order to successfully sound out the words slime or slow. Makes sense, right?
And I agree.
HOWEVER, there are two reasons why explicit instruction of consonant blends (initial and final) do carry value.
The first consideration:
The first benefit of teaching blends is for those struggling spellers who may spell a word like stand as sdand. In other words, students who write what they hear themselves sound out, even when our language never spells those letters next to each other. Other examples of similar spelling mistakes are:
jraw for draw
chrain for train
In this case, explicit instruction of blends can help prevent these types of spelling errors when students learn that certain letter combinations simply never go together.
The second consideration:
Another time to consider explicit instruction of blends is to support knowledge of accurate syllable division. For example, VCCCV (vowel-consonant-consonant-consonant-vowel) words like monster, conflict, and pumpkin all require division somewhere among the consonants. Having knowledge of blends that stay together helps immensely in understanding where the division will occur.
So, is teaching blends absolutely necessary?
When it comes down to it, what’s the verdict? If students have the fluent ability to blend the phonemes represented by the graphemes in front of them to read words, have no spelling deficits, and can effortless divide VCCCV words properly, they will not require much instructional time spent on blends, and may just benefit from a quick reinforcement. Conversely, if students are struggling with spelling and syllable division, time spend on blends will be warranted. As always, explicit instruction is crucial.
Types of Consonant Blends
L-blends: bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl
R-blends: br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr,
S-blends: sc, sk, (sl), sm, sn, sp, st, sw
Final blends: ct, ft, ld, lf, lk, lp, lt, mp, nd, nk, nt, pt, rd, rk, sk, sp, st, xt
3-letter blends: scr, shr, spl, spr, squ, str, thr, nch
Other blends: dw, tw
I hope this information helps to drive meaningful instruction and sorts out any questions you may have had about the shoulds or ifs of consonant blends instruction.
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