Teaching Kindergartners to Blend the Play Way

The systematic teaching of all phonological awareness skills is imperative to ensure a students’ future reading success. Daily, intentional instruction of, and more importantly, the “playing with" individual sounds in a meaningful way will build cognitive clarity as students experience how sounds work together to form words.

A child’s future reading success is directly linked to his/her understanding of phonological awareness skills. Consequently, daily intentional, strategic teaching of those skills must exist in the kindergarten classroom. The best way to teach these skills? Well the play way of course.  The last few weeks I have been practicing the art of blending sounds together to make words. Tomorrow I plan to add a little kinesthetic action to the skill to help students that are struggling with the concept.

Bounce the Blends

Common Core Objective: RF.K.2. Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

Materials: Gather a small basketball (I have a jack-o-lantern ball that is perfect for a halloween theme).

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Today we are going to make words by blending sounds together. On your turn, I will bounce three sounds like this (model as you say the sound, bouncing once for each sound) /b/ /a/ /t/.

What is that word? When the child responds bat, throw the ball to him and then have him toss it back.  Repeat again with a new word continuing as time allows.

*Note. When students conquer the skill of blending use this same game in a reverse manner. Have student draw a picture card and then bounce once for each sound in the word, then say the whole word as they toss the ball to the teacher.

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