MA Standards:
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.3: Demonstrate beginning understanding of phonics and word analysis skills.
Head Start Outcomes:
Literacy Knowledge/Phonological Awareness: Identifies and discriminates between sounds and phonemes in language, such as attention to beginning and ending sounds of words and recognition that different words begin or end with the same sound.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 8: Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
Word Play: Blending Sounds
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ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Phonological Awareness (Segmenting, Blending), Vocabulary
Tell children that you will say some words from the book they read today. Say, I’ll say the parts of each word slowly. Listen carefully. See if you can put the word parts together.
- Say /r/ (pause) /ō/. Say it again. Ask, Who knows the word? Choose a child to tell you the word: row.
- Say /b/ (pause) /ōt/ and ask, Who knows the word? Choose a child to tell you the word: boat.
- Repeat the process with dream (/dr/ /ēm/), with (/w/ /ith/), place (/pl/ /ās/), storm (/st/ /orm/), shore (/sh/ /or/), left (/l/ /eft/), and tight (/t/ /īt).
English Language Learners: Pair English language learners with strong English speakers to help them try to blend sounds.
Adaptation: With very young children, you may prefer to do only two or three words.