How to fix blending difficulty

Blending difficulty can make learning to read so much harder for strugglers. What do we mean by “blending”?

When you decode, or sound out a word, you then have to blend those sounds together to form the whole word. So /k/ /uh/ /d/ becomes “could”.

Some children struggle more with this than others. This may be due to simply insufficient practice, poor phonics instruction, or an auditory processing weakness.

The good news is that it is usually simple to fix, with a bit of targeted practice. We use a little exercise that may seem too simple to make a difference, but it works virtually every time.

What you do is get the learner to pick five words of their own choice each day. They break those five words into their individual sounds and then put them back together into the word for you.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t get the breaking apart exactly right. We just want to build their confidence with putting sounds back together and it will do that either way.

Generally you will see the issue go away in a few days if you do this exercise each day.