How To Teach Kids English Reading With Basic Blending and Division Rule
English Reading : Sound dividing strategies
When trying to read a new word in English which you are not familiar with, we try to divide the word in chunks considering the vowel sounds .
International /in/ /ter/ /na/ /tion/ /al/
These individual Chunk sounds make reading any new word little easy as little chunks are easy to remember in our short memory to later blend them.
Strong – /str/ /ong/
But do you know you cannot just divide the sounds in the word randomly. Though syllable knowledge helps to greater extent in dividing the sounds in a word (to read) , most of us are not fully aware of it. And that is completely fine. Even today I struggle to use those syllable division rules.
When dividing the word sound in to pieces with/without syllable knowledge just based on vowel sounds you should follow some rules
Rule 1 # Blends
Always consider the blends like cl , fl, sp, tr etc as one sound. In the word flower do not take f , l as two sounds /f/ and /l/. /fl/ always stands as single sound. Similar is the case with other blends.
clock – /c//l//o//ck/ This is wrong.
clock – /cl//o//ck/ treat cl as one sound.
Rule 2 # Digraphs
Remember the digraphs ch, th, sh, wh. Never split them in individual sound
Ship – /s//h/ /i//p/ This is wrong
It should be [sh] [i] [p]. Sh is one sound.
Rule 3 # Vowel Teams
When you see two vowels next to each other consider them as one single sound. Vowel pair can have
long and silent sound – ai, ay, ee, ea , ie, oa, oe,
short or special sound (vowel digraphs) – oo, ei, au, ea, aw
gliding sound (dipthongs) – oy, ow, ew, oi, ou
when reading the word Wheat – never divide it as /wh/ /e//a//t/ but divide it as /wh//ea//t/
Rule 4 # R – Controlled vowels
Any vowel with consonant r have different sound and we should always know how to sound them.
ar, er, ir, or, ur are r controlled vowels and r changes the sound of the vowel. So never isolate sounds in /ar/ to /a//r/ and same with other r controlled vowels.
Farm – /f/ /ar/ /m/
Term – /t/ /er/ /m/
Shirt – /sh/ /ir/ /t/
Torch – /t/ /or/ /ch/
Turn – /t/ /ur//n/
Rule 5 # Silent E ( C + le)
Consonant + le is when you have a consonant followed by le in the word .
Eg : turtle
Always consider c+le as single sound
Turtle – /t/ /u/ /r/ /t/ /l/ /e/ this is not the correct way.
Consider dividing the ounds as /t/ /ur/ /tle/ so that you can read it eaily.
Rule 6 # glued sounds
Glued sounds or welded sounds are sounds that make slightly different sound when they are together.
Glued sounds are all ,am,an, ang , ank, ing , ong, ung, unk, ink, onk.
Bank – /b/ /a/ /n/ /k/ never do this.
Instead do /b/ /ank/.
You need not be an expert in syllables to read a word. Just remember these basic rules and apply them when dividing sounds in a word so that you can read it easily.
