Once students have strong phonemic awareness and can read closed syllables, they're ready to tackle words with blends. 

Blends are consonants that stand next to each other in a word or syllable, and each consonant makes its own sound. The word step, for example, begins with the blend 'st.' Both the /s/ sound and the /t/ sound are pronounced.

Blends can be made up of two consonants, like 'st', or three consonants, like 'str'. There are also blends with two phonemes and three letters, like 'shr' in shrink. 

Some blends come at the beginning of a word or syllable — before the vowel. We call these beginning or initial blends. For example, 'gr' in grab and 'tw' in twin are beginning blends. We teach these first as they are the easiest blends to hear in words.

Consonant blends that come at the end of a word or syllable, following the vowel, are called ending or final blends. For example, 'lk' in milk and 'nt' in tent are both ending blends.

Watch as Jenifer Rogers, a first-grade teacher at Burgess-Peterson Academy in Atlanta, uses a fun chant with hand motions to help her students review ending blends.

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Jenifer Rogers: Who can tell me our new rule for this week? Vaughn.

Vaughn: End blends.

Jenifer Rogers: Everybody say end blends

Students: End blends.

Jenifer Rogers: So before we learned and we knew that blends could go where in a word? Last week, where did we learn that our blends could go in a word? Shaw?

Shaw: The beginning.

Jenifer Rogers: The beginning of a word. So last week we knew that those blends could go at the beginning of the word. And this week we now have learned that they can also go where?

Students: At the end.

Jenifer Rogers: At the end. Which is the back of the word. I love that. We could hear them at the end. So tell me please, what is a blend? A blend is ... together ...

Students: Two letters put together. Two sounds.

Jenifer Rogers: Ooh, I love that. So we know that we have to hear both of those sounds. We have two letters. Say two letters.

Students: Two letters.

Jenifer Rogers: We put them together.

Students: We put them together.

Jenifer Rogers: We hear two sounds.

Students: We hear two sounds.

Jenifer Rogers: That's right. Do some of them with me? What is the blend at the end of this word?

Students: 'sp'

Jenifer Rogers: /s/, /p/

Students: /s/, /p/

The great thing about blends is that the sounds themselves are not new! Each consonant retains its usual sound, which students already know. The focus here should be on blending these known sounds together as students read, and separating them as they spell. 

There are more than 75 consonant blends in the English language. Below are some of the most common blends you'll find in words.

Common Blends

Beginning two-letter blends:	bl-, cl-, gl-, fl-, pl-, sl-, br-, cr-, dr-, fr-, gr-, pr-, tr- , sm-, sn-, sc-, st-, sk-, sw-, sp-, tw-
Beginning three-letter blends:	str-, spl-, spr-, scr-, squ-
Ending two-letter blends:	-lk, -nd, -mp, -nt, -st, -ft, -ld, -sp, -ct, -lf, -sk, -lt, -lp, -pt

It's possible to classify blends into different categories — for instance, blends that begin with 's' or blends with an 'r'. However, there is no need for students to memorize and practice all of these categories. Simply teach students that blends are consonants that like to stand next to each other or "hang out" together in a word, and that each consonant in the blend makes its own sound.

Pairing phonemic awareness and phonics is the best approach when teaching blends. If students can orally blend, segment, and manipulate the sounds in words with blends, they will find it easier when it is time to read and write these words. You'll want to spend time doing phonemic awareness activities, or listening games, before diving into blends. For instance, you'll say a word like clap and students will practice isolating the sounds.

Watch reading coach Carla Stanford of Reading Universe lead a phonemic awareness activity using Elkonin sound boxes (opens in new window) to help students isolate and hear the sounds in a beginning blend.

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Carla Stanford: These are called sound boxes. [Ms. Stanford points to boxes drawn in a row on a white board.] I'm going to say a word. I'm going to have you repeat the word and then we are going to push the two, the first two sounds in the word, and you can tap, so it will go like this. We'll do a practice. The word is block. Repeat.

Students: Block.

Carla Stanford: Tappers up.

Carla Stanford and students: /b/, /l/ ...

Carla Stanford: Did you hear that? '/b/, /l/, /ŏ/, /c/. Block. Excellent.

Tricky 'r' Blends

There are two beginning blends in particular that tend to be trickier for students to hear and spell: 'dr' and 'tr'. The letters 'dr', like in drink, often sound like /jr/ when said aloud. And 'tr', like in tree, often sounds like /chr/. When teaching students these tricky blends, we can tell them that no English word starts with 'jr', so if they hear those sounds, spell them 'dr'. We can also tell students that if they hear /chr/ at the beginning of a word to spell it 'tr'.

In this video, teacher Princess Watts Blount has first graders practice segmenting the sounds in words with tricky 'r' blends.

Tricky 'r' Blends: 'dr' and 'tr'

Connecting Blends with Other Phonics Skills

Digraphs vs. Blends

If you are following our phonics continuum, you will have already taught your students about digraphs. A digraph is two letters that come together to make one sound. This is different from a blend, which is also made up of two consonants but each consonant makes its own individual sound. 

The word flat has four sounds (or phonemes), because each letter in the blend 'fl' makes its own sound. The word shed has three sounds, because the digraph 'sh' only makes one sound.

Blends with 'c' and 'k'

If you are following our phonics continuum, you have also already taught students how to choose between 'c' and 'k' when spelling words with short vowels. Now, it is time to teach the 'c' vs. 'k' spelling rule as it applies to words with blends. 

'C' vs. 'k' spelling rules

Print these 'c' vs. 'k' spelling rules

Download Rules

When introducing blends with the /k/ sound, students now have to make a spelling decision based on its position in the word. 

The letter 'c' should be used in a blend when the /k/ sound is followed by 'a', 'o', or 'u', as in scab, or if the /k/ sound is followed by another consonant, as in clip and fact. 

The letter 'k' is used in a blend when the /k/ sound is followed by 'i', 'e', or 'y', like in skip. You will also use 'k' if the /k/ sound is followed by nothing, meaning it stands alone at the end of a one-syllable word, as in mask. See more details on this rule in our skill explainer on spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'.

Exception to the Rule

You will find some exceptions to this rule, like in skate, skull, and skunk.

Connection to High-Frequency Words

We do NOT need students to memorize high-frequency words that have consonant blends and follow a regular spelling pattern. Now that you have explicitly taught blends, they can sound out the words for reading and spelling. Below are some high-frequency words containing consonant blends that you can easily incorporate into your phonics lessons. 

High-Frequency Words with Blends

ask
best
black
fast
help
jump
just
must
stop
went