Wait... What is CV blends/blend ladders/successive blending?!
It's a method of teaching reading that is phonetic, traditional, and Science of Reading supported. It just makes sense. When I taught Kindergarten for 5 years, this is the method that was used with the curriculum we used and it just works. No guessing, no stopping to think about what COULD the answer be? I've seen it work so fast and so well with students who are ready to read as well as with students who are struggling- although it may take a little longer for those students.
I've taught parents how to use this method to help at home as well. So, let's get into what it is and how I teach reading using it. First though we have to start at the beginning.
When teaching Kindergarten (or any age child who is starting at the beginning) the first thing I do is start with the vowels. I know... craziness. Listen though, it just makes sense. What is in EVERY syllable? What does every word have at least one of? What is often the harder sounds to learn- because they have 2+ sounds? Vowels!
So let's spend the MOST time on what we are going to see and use the most. I start with Ii and we talk about how it looks on a line, we trace it with our magic fingers, we make the sound, we look at pictures and decide if they start with i. We practice writing the lower and upper case letter Ii. On the second day, we review all of that with the letter Ii, and then say short CVC words like pig, lip, etc. and decide if they have the /i/ sound. We sort pictures together, and notice words with the i sound. We continue to practice writing while we are talking about how to make that letter.
If most students have the Ii pretty well, not perfect, then you COULD move on to the next vowel Ee on day three. If not, I would spend one more day talking, writing, and making /i/ sounds. Go through all the vowels in this way spending 2-3 days on them. Be VERY careful enunciating and having them say correctly the vowel sounds (especially the i/e).
I introduce the vowels in this order- i, e, u, o, a.
After I have gone over all the vowel sounds we'll spend another day or two just playing with and listening for the correct vowel sound in words with one short vowel sound, so CVC words. If it would be beneficial for you to have some game or activities for practicing this, let me know and I can suggest some things. I LOVE word sorts personally and we did them several times a week in our composition books. I do have a Free Vowel Cut and paste activity on my TPT store that would be perfect, as well as a Point, Read, and Write activity, and the CV Blend Bump Games has a bonus set of Vowel Bump Game Boards in that.
Step 1 in blending words together is knowing those vowels so well. I also love and used in my classroom twice a day. Yes, twice a day. We learned and sang The Better Alphabet Song by Katie Garner. She does a version with Jack Hartmann that my class loves. I always just had it queued up to when the music starts. We sang this song as I flipped through the letter cards (yes, I did use the Secret Stories in my classroom and LOVE it). Then we would listen and sing as we cleaned up our centers and came back to the carpet. It was a signal to begin cleaning up, but it was also a timer as my students had to be cleaned up and back sitting on the carpet by the time the song was over.
I'll be back tomorrow with a post on the next Step I use when teaching littles to read.