Blending

Blending, or the ability to join speech sounds together to make words, is a crucial phonemic awareness skill that helps students to read unfamiliar words.

Blending is the skill of joining individual speech sounds (phonemes) together to make a word. Research suggests that blending is a crucial phonemic awareness skill that should be taught as part of a research-based approach to the teaching of reading. Can you blend (join) these speech sounds to hear the word (click on the buttons to hear the speech sounds)?

Why is blending important?

Blending is a crucial skill in learning to read since being able to mentally join speech sounds together to make words helps students to decode unfamiliar words using letter-sound patterns when reading. Difficulties with the ability to blend is a hallmark of the struggling reader.