We have come to Step 6 in Phonological Awareness, and I think it’s the biggest. I have decided to break it into 3 parts. This post will talk about Segmenting and Blending and next week’s post is about Adding, Deleting, Substituting, and Manipulating Phonemes. Students need to start with oral segmenting and blending. Students need to practice and practice and practice!
Segmenting
Let’s count the phonemes in a word. When we start with oral exercises, students don’t confuse phonemes with letters. We need to make sure we students can hear all the sounds in a word and count them.
Providing many opportunities to do this increases the automaticity. When we increase the automaticity, we increase their ability to match sound to symbol later.
Students should start with segmenting two sounds: /m/ /ee/ for me and /n/ /o/ for no but they will move to segmenting longer words in no time.
Students can segment with finger counting, moving manipulatives, or matching phonemes to numbers.
Blending
Students also need to practice blending the phonemes to create a word. We practice with oral blending BEFORE we add letters to practice. Students listen to each phoneme and blend them to create and/or match a word to a picture. Practicing with provided or drawn Elkonin Boxes helps keep the sounds in order.
I have created sets to help with Segmenting and Blending. If you’d like a Segmenting and Blending Sample Set, fill out the form below to get it.
How can I help?
The Segmenting Bundle has 3 Sets:
Count and Segment (4 activities)
Seasonal Segmenting Cards (24 cards for each season), and
Segment and Sort (3 activities)
There are 3 sets, but they can also be purchased in a bundle for extra savings.
The Blending Set also has 3 sets and 13 activities. Blending Set 1 (4 activities) helps students blend orally with blending mats, tic tac toes cards and blend and match.
Blending Set 2 (3 activities) introduces Rosie the Blending Robot and her self-checking cards, and build and create houses and boars.
Finally, Blending Set 3 (6 activities) has printable and digital activities to increase blending success.
And don’t forget the Phonological Awareness BIG BUNDLE!
