Know-Its: The Link To Reading

Stretching letter sounds together is one of the most important skills for a beginning reader to learn. When a child blends his first word and it makes sense to him, a reader is born! Blending sounds into words opens the door to reading by enabling the reader to attack new words on his own. Here's how . . .

The trick to teaching children to blend words is to combine the beginning consonant(s) with the vowel without making a break in the voice. Learning how to "keep the voice going" is demonstrated by using a stretchband, rubberband, or elastic. As a child stretches his voice, he literally stretches the stretchband to give the idea of blending. The child should blend from the beginning sounds to the vowel and continue saying the vowel sound. Then the final consonant should be popped onto the end. For example, to sound out the word "mop," the child would say, mmmooop. You can easily tell the sound that would be elongated or stretched. Know-Its and Beyond Stage I provides a DVD modeling this process with puppets learning to stretch their sounds with a stretchband. After learning the blending process, individual practice reading charts, playing a game, and reading a book help reinforce the skill.

When a child is reading a book, let him attempt to stretch the sounds (if it is a phonetically consistent word). If he chops the sounds, model once again how to blend. The time teaching this skill is well worth it. It makes students into independent readers!