Blending - what is it?

 

To say the individual sounds that make up a word and blend them together to hear the whole word for reading e.g. s-a-t becomes sat. We say you blend to read and segment (see below) to spell.

 

Segmenting

 

To write or spell a word by listening for the sounds in the word and deciding which letters represent those sounds.

We say you blend to read and segment to spell.

So, for example, with ‘dog’, children learn the sounds the letters d,o, and g make separately and then how they blend to say ‘dog’.

Note that it’s the sounds the letters make that are important at this stage and not the letter names (i.e. not ‘ay’, ‘bee’ as in the alphabet song etc).