Bright Ideas for Teaching Blends {Including FREE Resources}

Over the years, I've learned that teaching students to read is a "squishy" process. There are so many skills students have to grasp in order to read fluently with a high level of comprehension.  One set of skills that benefits most students is having phonemic awareness and a knowledge of phonics.
Knowing letters, their sounds, and how they work together can give students the tools they need to attack many unknown words.  I like teaching phonics.  It is usually pretty easy to tell if a student has it or not.  Phonics is a little less squishy than some other aspects of teaching reading.

I incorporate a variety of activities into our weekly work to practice phonics.  For early readers, I think it is very important to continuously work with and review phonics skills.  One simple way I  accomplish this goal is by using picture/letter cards (or posters) with my class.

In my district, we use Wilson Fundations as our primary language program.  It sets the sequence and scope for the phonics that I teach in class.  Foundations includes a frequent review of letters and their sounds through the Letter-Keyword-Sound activity.
I created this set of cards (and posters) so that my students could review initial and final blends through hearing and saying the letters, the keyword, and sound for each set of blends.
I usually use these cards during our group time on the carpet.  Below is an example of how to use the card for Letter-Keyword-Sound practice.

While I'm teaching the blends, I will go over these cards daily.  After we've moved on from blends, I'll pull these out once or twice a week as a quick and easy review.  

If you do not want to fool with the cards, you can use the posters for your Letter-Keyword-Sound work.

Of course, you can use these cards and posters for display or anyway you would like.
For your FREE set of blends cards and posters, click here or on any of the pictures above.

Other ways my students work with blends include...

PICTURE SORTS

WORD SORTS

RHYMING WORD MATCHING

COMPLETE THE WORD & ILLUSTRATE 

These type of exercises are a great way for students to work independently with blends.
If you are interested in any of these print-and-go resources, they are part of my Words at Work packets, available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Click here for more details.

     

In addition to the card review and the printable practice, I also incorporate blend work into literacy centers.  I love math and literacy centers for spiral review throughout the year.  Literacy centers give students yet another opportunity to explicitly work with initial and final blends.  

Pictured below are two FREE literacy centers that focus on initial blends.  Click on either picture for a FREE copy of that center.

LITERACY CENTER FREEBIE (LEAFY DAY BLENDS)

      LITERACY CENTER FREEBIE (HOT CHOCOLATE BLENDS)

Students generally catch onto initial and final blends fairly easy.  Giving them ongoing practice with these skills helps ensure that your young learners will not forget these letter sounds and how to use them when decoding words.
I hope some of these ideas will be useful to you in your classroom.
Thanks so much for stopping by.