Teaching Tips for Blending CVC Words

Even with a reading endorsement, college did not teach me how to teach first grade reading. The specifics of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction weren't part of any courses I took. In this post I'm going to give you the essential information about how to teach blending, a crucial skill for learning to read, to every student including those who really struggle or are still learning to speak English.

This information combines knowledge gained from at least 2 professional development trainings, some extensive online research and personal experience. I'll also introduce a fool-proof activity designed to help students learn to blend CVC words once they are ready to transition from blending sounds to blending letters.

Teachers used to commonly tell students to "sound out" words when they were stuck. This phrase is vague. It's better for teachers to explicitly state the skill students need to use. Often what we mean to say is, say the sounds in order and blend them together. However, if a student doesn't know how to blend the sounds together, neither prompt is going to help them read this word.

To decode words, students need to know how to blend letter sounds together.  They start by just blending sounds.

What is blending?

Blending is a phonemic awareness skill: combining individual sounds, or phonemes, to make a word. The phonemes are the sounds produced by the letters, not the letter names. When getting started, the students are not looking at any letters. They are only blending sounds they hear the teacher say.

Blending vs. Segmenting

Blending is the opposite of segmenting: it assists with decoding words. It is the process of putting isolated sounds together to make a word.

Breaking a word down into individual sounds, or phonemes, is called segmenting. Segmenting is what you would do to assist with spelling. It's a completely different skill, but it is easier to teach. There is far more information about teaching segmentation than there is about teaching blending.

Blending is the key skill students need to decode words. Teachers need to segment words in order to give students the opportunity to blend them. To blend sounds, students listen to each phoneme, or individual sound, in order. They may echo the sounds slowly at first, then they get faster until they can say the word normally. 

How do you teach blending sounds?

Blending sounds is a pre-reading skill, like segmenting. Students first develop blending as a phonemic awareness skill. When they have a strong understanding of letters and sounds, they apply the skill to their reading.

Students begin learning to blend sounds using CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. This works because there aren't many sounds to put together. It also helps that many CVC words are very concrete, so they are words young children have experience with and can picture.

Students often need direct teacher support to develop their ability to blend sounds. There are some letters that are easier to blend than others.

You can make blending easier by using words that begin with longer consonant sounds because the initial sound can be stretched out and you can smoothly shift from the consonant sound to the vowel sound. Consonants with long sounds are f, l, m, n, r, s, v, z. They are good initial sounds because they can be stretched. For example, it will be easier to blend s-a-t and f-i-t than to blend d-a-d and b-e-t. When you say a sound like /d/ or /b/, it's short and abrupt; you can't flow smoothly into the next sound.

What do you do if students have trouble blending sounds?

If a student isn't able to blend 3 sounds, try combining two sounds for them. To make blending easy for students, use words with long initial consonant sounds. Blend the first two sounds for them, then leave a pause and say the final sound:  zi—p, fa—t, si—t. The shorter the pause, the closer you are to saying the word, so the easier it is for students to blend the sounds.

It's rare that this would be impossible, but if you get a blank look, model a few times. You could also put out a few pictures representing CVC words. For example, display pictures to show log, dip, fin. (Note that these words are very different. None of them start with the same letter, and none have the same rime or final sound.) Tell the student these pictures are to give them clues about the word you are saying. Use words you are confident the student has heard. If working with an ELL student, you may have to talk about the words before giving them the sounds. When ready, say," lo--g. "

This is to give the student a chance to experience success. If they can't be successful with this, back up and focus on phonemic awareness skills like identifying the first sound in a word.

Continue using picture support with words that are more similar, like fin, fog, log. (Notice that this group has words with the same beginning letter and words with the same rime.)

This procedure should not take long. If one lesson isn't enough, they need to go back and work on simpler phonemic awareness skills.

When students can easily figure out that "zi--p" is "zip" and "fa--t" is fat, start using short initial consonant sounds like "di--m" and "pa--t."

Once they can consistently blend with this technique, switch the part of the word you're blending for them. Start isolating the first sound and blending the second two sounds for them.  Go back to using words with a long initial consonant sound. For example, the teacher can say z--ip, f—at, s—it. Eventually, move on to words like "d--ip" and "t--en."

When students can consistently finish blending CVC words with the teacher doing two of the sounds for them, they are ready to blend all 3 sounds on their own.

Say segmented CVC words for the students: z—i—p, f—a—t, s—i—t. (Notice that once again, we switch back to words that start with the long consonant sounds.) If you treat this like a mystery and call it a secret code, it really boosts enthusiasm.

How to teach phonics blending

When students know most letter sounds and can blend 3 isolated sounds with teacher support, they are ready to decode CVC words independently. They need to be very solid with all their consonant and short vowel sounds because they are transitioning from phonemic awareness to phonics.

They are not only dealing with the sounds now, they are also mentally converting symbols--letters--into sounds and blending those sounds together to make meaningful words. Doesn't it sound incredibly difficult when you put it that way? That's because it is incredibly difficult! Fortunately, we can make blending easier for students by making it more concrete.

Drawing a simple road with the letters from a CVC word stretched out across it makes blending concrete for beginning readers.  

Students can use an actual toy car (or pretend any small object is a car) and say the sounds as they drive the car along the road.  Like with phonemic awareness, it’s easier if you start with the longer consonant sounds. It also helps to keep the vowel sound the same and introduce new vowels gradually. 

Short vowel sounds in CVC words

Usually, short vowel progression goes something like this: a, i, o, e, u. In my experience, i and o are the easiest for kids. I suspect this is because they are common and more consistent in how they sound than a.

It is extremely common for reading textbooks to start out with -an and -am. This seems logical because an and am are usually taught as sight words, so you are starting with word chunks that the student should be familiar with. However, if you listen closely to these words, you’ll notice that the /a/ sound (at least with my Midwestern. US accent) isn’t the same as the short a sound as in apple that beginning readers are taught. Students have trouble getting the word because they use the “apple” sound and it doesn’t sound like a word they know. I suggest avoiding words that end with -am and -an for a while. Start with chunks like -ag, -at, -ap, and -ab. 

Effective phonics blending practice

To give students lots of engaging practice with blending, I created a self-checking activity, Blending CVC Words, that they can work on independently. Sometimes this activity gives students their first experience putting together their phonics knowledge with their phonemic awareness knowledge.

Click on the picture to see it on Teachers Pay Teachers.

When they drive their car across the road and say the sounds to themselves, they suddenly realize that they know what the word says. They can flip the paper over to see a picture of the word and confirm their success.

This is the moment first grade teachers live for. The moment that they realize: I can read words! They aren’t just remembering the words; they are actually figuring out what the word is by using their letter knowledge and blending skills. Talk about a powerful moment!

Teaching in a high-poverty, ELL school in an urban district, I had a 100% success rate with this system for teaching students to blend sounds and decode words.

The full activity contains 65 words with accompanying pictures for students to practice decoding.  If you want a sure-fire way to teach your students to blend CVC words, look no further. It’s incredibly engaging, effective, and easy to use.