Blending by Christmas!

landrew3
3 days ago
5 min read

Let's get all our Reception children blending by Christmas!

Blending is the key skill that children need to read words. How can we support all our children to be confident blenders by Christmas.

Why Christmas you ask... is Father Christmas keeping tabs on SSP progress?

Of course not, he's far too busy.

Blending is an expectation of progress for Reception children in many SSP programmes because if a child doesn't crack blending then their word reading progress is stalled.

We need our teaching of blending to be the best it can be!

Let's revisit the basics - What is blending?

Oral blending is the skill of listening to separate sounds e.g. m - u - d and blending these sounds together to make a word e.g. mud. Oral blending is an auditory skill meaning that we are listening to the sounds and hearing them blend together to make a word. We do not use any GPCs (grapheme phoneme correspondences) or sound cards. We call it oral blending because we say the say the sounds and the word aloud as a blending support until children can blend in their heads. When we teach oral blending it's important to include the following steps as well as follow your SSP guidance:

Say the sounds separately and ask the children to listen and copy. d - i -g
If the children cannot hear the blended word, you will need to draw the sounds together and model listening to the sounds and hearing the blend. d - i - g d-i-g dig
Ensure that all children have practiced the skill themselves and not just listened to you or other children. Everybody copy me d - i - g dig.

Top tip - ensure that the children look at your mouth as you say the sounds - really emphasise the mouth shape of each sound. They will be more likely to copy your pure sounds.

Blending to read words is the skill of reading graphemes and blending them together to read the word. When teaching blending to read words ensure to include the following steps as well as follow your SSP guidance:

Recall the GPCs or sounds the children will need to read the words. Ensure these are recalled with ease. This is a prerequisite to the skill of blending. Sometimes speed of GPC recall can be barrier to hearing the blend. If a child is very slow at recalling the sounds, it can be too slow to hear the blend. This is why repeated practice of GPC/sound cards is so vital!
Practice orally blending the word first - see above section.
Model word reading blending in line with your SSP guidance e.g. sound talk and blend my turn h - a - t hat. The children should be watching and listening to your model. The children then copy your model and practice blending. This will need to repeated many time with a range of words.
It's effective to build the words you will blend with GPC/sound cards, so the children can see the sounds coming together to make the word. Sometimes children also need to see a picture of the word to support orthographic mapping.

Move onto modelling and practicing blending with whole word cards. Ensure to follow your SSP guidance for the language and strategy to use when reading words.

Top tip - Keep your teacher talk to the minimum. Model exactly what you want the children to do.

What can we do if children are still struggling?

Even when we know that our teaching of blending is really strong, there may still be some pupils who still struggle with the skill of blending. Sometimes pupils with SEND can find the skill of blending difficult.

Early identification and intervention is key

We must use our assessment for learning to ensure we identify pupils who are falling behind as soon as possible. We don't want to wait until the first summative assessment point in Reception. We need to know who can blend and who can't, so we can support through early intervention. Plan how you will check and record this. Your SSP may well have a downloadable spreadsheet, if not you could create one to assess the sounds you have taught, oral blending and word reading.

Repeated practice whole class

Revisit and review taught GPCs/sound cards multiple times a day to build speedy recognition and recall.

Embed oral blending throughout the day in your classroom. For example...

Teacher "Children can you see my p - e - n ?"

Children " p - e - n pen"

Teacher "Oh yes here's my pen. p - e - n pen!"

This is a great way to practice during provision time and in those transition moments throughout the day.

If needed timetable in additional practice of blending for your whole class. This needs to be in addition to the phonics lesson.

Top tip - So many children of reception age benefit from or need this level of repeated practice throughout the day. Think little and often as oppose to one long session. The key is to have the resources to hand. Make sure all the adults in your classroom are on board with this too!

Repeated practice small groups or 1:1

Some children will need additional practice in a small group or even 1:1 in order to attend and focus. Some children may need this level of intervention for both GPCs and blending. Follow your SSP guidance for intervention planning.

What to check for if a child is still struggling to blend?

Has the child's hearing and sight been checked?
Meet with your SENCO to discuss the stalled progress and seek advice.
Could it be an issue with the child's phonological awareness?
Phonological awareness is the ability to hear, distinguish and manipulate sounds. It includes four sounds levels.
Adapted from National Centre on Improving Literacy
There is often a strong correlation between phonemic awareness and ability to read words. Make a note to look into phonological assessment tools to unpick this further if you suspect some of your children may struggle with some of these.

We are delighted to have Charlotte Raby, education consultant, running a virtual session for us focusing on cracking blending. She will unpick the the theory and practice of blending, so we can teach all children to blend.

It's well worth booking you and your team onto the session. Listening to Charlotte explain strategies and scaffold to use with our slowest progress readers has been inspiring and a real light bulb moment for myself!

Follow this link to our events page to book Training Opportunities - English Hubs