I've often had parents and other teachers who are new to successive blending ask me questions. Here are the top 3 questions I get asked.
1. It is important that students be taught that we are using the short vowel sounds when we are learning to read and using successive blending at the beginning of the year. I teach letter sounds all year long (with fluency drills and our clean up song), and when we get to a vowel we always say both vowel sounds. We also always say the short sound first. The reason we do that, is it's the most common sound of that vowel (or letter). I actually use the Secret Stories Better Alphabet song for my clean up song EVERY day cleaning up centers in Kindergarten. She does a wonderful job of explaining why she does both sounds.
2. Why are you not saying to (like I am going to the store) when the blend ladder has a to. Same question for any of the blend ladders that do make words. I explicitly teach students that these are NOT words we are reading. They are the beginning of a word. We are learning to blend, not practicing sight words. Which is a whole other thing that I could go on about. But will not right now. If you are tempted or don't know what sound you should be saying, but another consonant on the end to make a CVC word. The beginning sound you say is the one you should be saying. So for the above example think of top. The /to/ sound at the beginning of top is the sounds those two letter make when blended together.
and lastly,
3. Everyone else uses word families like -an, and -ot, why don't you? Don't they need to know about word families?! Why? Why would you teach a struggling to read (whether because they are new to reading and just learning or they have a learning difficulty) by going to the end, and then going back to the beginning?! It honestly makes no sense. I have seen so many children who are trying to do this and by the time they have sounded out the word family, they have no idea what the first letter was. They go back and get that sound, only to forget what the word family was. Think about when you come across a word that is unfamiliar to you. Would you jump to the end?! Probably not. You might check the end along the way for a suffix- that would help with meaning. But that's not anywhere close to where beginning readers should be working. I threw out ALL of my word family activities. None of my kinders did any work with them and they are all readers.
And I have some news for those following my store on TPT. I am throwing a thank you to all of my followers by giving you 15% off all items in my store today through September 24, 2026. If you aren't following me over there yet, go give me a follow and get the discount! Share with friends and family.
I'm pretty excited about my newest store item(s). I was driving home last week when I just got the idea for Blendo! It's a fun game to practice adding consonants onto CV blends to make CVC words.
Thank you for following and have a blessed year!
Heidi Lentz
