Do your students know all of their letter sounds and are beginning to read CVC words? Perhaps they are able to say each sound, but then struggle with the blending part. For example, when reading the word “cat”, they might say “/c/ /a/ /t/ … at”. This is completely normal for children who are just starting to sound out words. But how do you get them to hear the whole word? Successive blending is a key strategy for this.
What is successive blending?
What exactly is successive blending and how is it different from regular blending? Successive blending is where a person blends only two sounds at a time, rather than trying to sound out the whole word at once. For example, with the word “cat”, they would read the sounds /c/ and /a/ and blend just those two together, making “ca”. Then, they would add on the last sound, reading it as “/ca/ /t/ … cat”.
When a student is only focused on two chunks at a time, their brain is able to process that much easier. But when they try to blend all three sounds together at once, they often leave out a sound. This is because by the time they reach the last sound in the word, their brain has already forgotten the first sound.
Word Mapping Tools
As I teach successive blending in my classroom, I like to use a variety of tools and resources. During my daily small group times, I focus on word mapping with my students. We use these word mapping mats to segment words and then practice blending the word back together with successive blending. Manipulatives make this even more fun. Some of my favorites include magnet wands, poppers, mini erasers, letter tiles, etc. Click the link below to see all of my favorite phonics tools!
Teaching Slides
During our daily whole-group phonics instruction, I like to use these successive blending slides. With these slides, only one sound at a time appears, and then students blend just two sounds together before another sound is added. Then, there is a picture of the word for students to self-check their answer with. I have found that these slides are great for building fluency and helping students to become more automatic with their reading. They can also be used as students progress to other skills such as blends and digraphs and long vowels.
Practice Pages
These successive blending practice pages are another resource that I use during both small group instruction and for independent practice. They provide students with simple practice for saying each sound and then blending them together, as well as finding the picture that matches. These practice pages also allow for easy differentiate in my classroom, because they also include blends and digraphs and long vowels.
Ultimately, the goal is that students can fluently sound out words and blend all of the sounds together quickly. However, successive blending is a great strategy to scaffold beginning and struggling readers to help eventually get them to that point.
