What are Two Letter Consonant Blends?

Consonant letter blends are two or three letters that are beside each other (in a word) without a vowel between them. The often are seen at the beginning or end of a word (sometimes in the middle). Students are still required to say each sound but in a quicker way, which can be a challenge for some.

When teaching two letter consonant blends, there are a couple prerequisites to teaching this skill. Do your students know the letter sounds? Do they know letter sounds for the consonants, especially b, c, d, f, g, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w (almost all of them)? Do they understand the left-to-right tracking of words?

Blending Is Foundational to Reading

Both blending and segmenting are foundational to students learning to read. They are skills that are part of both phonemic awareness and phonics. Though you will come across students who can read “by sight”, this really is an exception to the way the majority of your class will learn to read. One assessment tool that our school district uses (and I’m happy about it!) focuses on determining if students know the beginning, middle, end sounds of a word, segmenting a word and blending sounds to create a word. If your students are sounding out and they are using their finger (optional) to track how to sound out a word, then blending will be much easier.

Two Letter Consonant Blends

These types of blends are two consonant letters that will still have their regular sounds. For example, the word “slim”. You pronounce the “s” and the “l” the same way as if they were in isolation. HOWEVER, when blending, you are going to drag the sound of “s” into the sound of “l”. They do not make a new sound.

The most common two letter consonant letter blends are:

• s – blends (sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw)
• l – blends (bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl)
• r – blends (br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr)
• w – blends (dr, sw, tw)

You will find these blends most often at the beginning of a word. There are also 3 letter blends (scr, shr, spl, spr, str, thr) and blends at the end of the word (ft, lk, lt, mp, nd, nk, nt, sm, sp, st,

Do You Really Need to Teach Blends?

English Language Learners are the largest population in my classroom. As some do not speak English, it becomes an important task for us, as teachers, to teach more explicit language development lessons in our day.

If you approach literacy from a “Science of Reading” perspective, then blends are taught as you teach words with orthographic mapping. Why? Because with blends we are still sounding out the words.

When introducing new words, have a visual and say the word often, slowly, in a sentence, in a response, etc. Use it many ways. We do not know which way will “click” for them, so do them all.

When Teaching Two Letter Consonant Blends

As mentioned above, it’s going to start with oral work. Use letter cards, mini-whiteboards, and make it a daily routine for a short time. Much like a daily number talk can start a math block, so too can a “word talk” can start a literacy block. You can read more about a word talk here.

I usually work on blends from two different scenarios:

• student asks me about a word, such as sleep, and it becomes a mini lesson
• I have specific spelling lists with blends (s-blends, l-blends, r-blends)

We talk about the words, we address the blend, “what do we do when we see a blend?” and practice it. If I feel the students need more practice, then I’ll take out blend sheets for them to work on. I don’t teach a blends unit. If you are teaching BLENDING, then blends should happen for your students.

PLEASE NOTE: when blending, you are going to drag the sound of “s” into the sound of “l”. Do not say the sounds in isolation, such as c-a-t. You are going to drag the sound of “c” to the “a”, and now you have the sound “ca”. Blending consonants and blending consonant-vowels is the same!

How Much Time Do You Spend on Teaching Two Letter Consonant Blends?

Not a lot, but depending on the needs within your class, A LOT would be a better answer. This current year, it’s becoming more than I usually do. I do not think that students are hearing the words properly or pronouncing them properly. For example, do you get the word “truck” spelled like this, “duck”. This is common.

Spend time making sure that when students are learning words, that they are hearing and enunciating the words correctly before getting them to spell them.

If you think you are spending too much time, you might need to backtrack. Maybe your students haven’t fully grasped the single sounds. Remember the emphasis should be on blending, not blends.

Happy Teaching!

Lori-Anne