If you’re teaching beginning reading, then you know that consonant blends are an important skill for students to master. By isolating the individual sounds in a blend, they can more easily read words that contain those blends. Here are some great activities to help your students practice isolating consonant blends and become masters of this phonics skill!
What are Beginning Blends
Consonant blends are a combination of two consonants that are placed together without a vowel between them. The consonants retain their original sound but work together to create a single sound. For beginning readers, knowing and recognizing beginning blends is an essential building block in learning how to read.
These beginning blends include things like “st” in “stop”, “sl” in “slow”, and even longer ones like “pl” in “planet.”
By working on beginning blend recognition with children at an early age, it can prepare them for success as they learn to read whole words. While beginning blends may be a tough concept for students to initially master, having the right resources and strategies can make all the difference for a successful beginning reader.
Why is Mastering the Skill of Beginning Blend Isolation Important?
Isolating initial consonant blends is a foundational phonics skill in helping children learn to read. When acquiring initial consonant blend skills, children will not only be more confident as readers but can gain the tools needed to develop improved reading fluency and accuracy.
Furthermore, learning to isolate beginning consonant blends gives kids the opportunity to sound out words that contain those blends – a crucial ability for achieving reading success.
With practice, children can take what they have learned regarding understanding the concept of blending sounds and apply that knowledge to decode new words. Developing this critical life skill gives your child the advantage of being literate and setting them up for educational success in the future!
Beginning Blends Activities
As an educator, I understand the importance of developing strong phonological awareness among young students. That’s why I’ve created resources to help them learn one of the most critical aspects – isolating beginning consonant blends.
Consonant blends allow students to break down words into recognizable chunks which are key for mastering reading and spelling. To make sure that each student has a strong foundation for learning foundational literacy skills, I created different activities and tasks that are designed to build their confidence and strengths in this area.
From play-based activities to online interactive games, these products provide various methods of instruction that make learning applicable, fun, and easy to understand. With this collection of resources, it will be easy for any and all teachers to help their students master identifying blends as they embark on their path toward becoming successful readers!
These beginning blends worksheets and picture sorts help students focus on 2 beginning blends at a time. Students look at each picture and isolate the consonant blend that they hear.
This resource helps students practice verbally isolating the onset and rime of a word to identify the beginning blend. It also helps students start to see the pattern between words with the same initial blend.
These beginning blends task cards provide students with 8 different activities to practice the skill of consonant blend isolation. The 8 included activities are:
- Clip-It – Students look at each picture and clip the beginning blend that matches.
- Write-It – Students look at the picture then isolate and write the beginning blend they hear.
- Puzzles – Students read the beginning blend word and match it to the correct picture.
- Word Match – Students match pictures to the correct beginning blends.
- Crack the Code – Students use a code to decipher each beginning blend word and then clip the correct picture that matches the word.
- Read and Find – Students find all the pictures that match the given beginning blend.
- Word Family Write-It – Students write the words to match the picture they see in each beginning blend family.
- Read and Choose – Students read a beginning blend word and then decide which picture matches from 3 options.
Students often see task cards as game-like activities and are highly motivated to work on them independently.
Boom Cards are a personal favorite of mine for the classroom because of their bright colors and self-checking capabilities. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about Boom Cards and how I use them in my classroom you can check out the links below:
This beginning blends deck is very similar to the worksheets where students zone in on 2 different blends and sort pictures into the right category. I love to use Boom Cards as a whole class review and then I move the deck into centers.
Giving Your Students the Beginning Blends Practice They Need
Consonant blends are an important phonological skill to master if you want your students to become successful readers. Knowing what consonant blends are, in addition to understanding why it is so important for readers, is the first step!
I’m here to help with that by offering 3 easy and fun resources. Through these materials, your students get the meaningful practice they need to instantly improve their beginning reading skills.
Now that you know more about consonant blends, don’t forget to check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store and purchase my beginning blends resources today! You won’t regret it!
