Why Segmenting and Blending?

Segmenting and Blending of individual letters in words is an important skill in the process of learning to read. Research indicates that phonological awareness skills are a strong marker of a child's ability to read. What exactly is "Segmenting" and "Blending"?

Segmenting is the ability to take words and break into individual sounds or phonemes. An example of this is the word /cat/. A child will begin to break this word into its individual phonemes: /c-a-t/.

Blending is the ability to take sounds and combine into words. An example of this is taking /c-a-t/ and blending into the word /cat/.

It may seem pretty straight forward, but there is a deeper process to simply learning Segmenting and Blending in this way. Take a look at the Reading Rockets graph below:

This model represents how we utilize a variety of skills for the purpose of reading; from simplest to most complex. Nothing is as easy as it seems, but with strategic interventions, practice, and consistency students will gain the foundational skills for reading!

-Miss Jen