8. Resource Hub: Teaching Blends

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Antonio Fierro: Let's use the build-a-word strategy with blends. The word is sled. I rode my sled down the hill. Sled. What's the word? Sled. Let's see how many sounds, how many phonemes are in the word sled ... /s/, /l/, /ĕ/, /d/. Four. So we need four lines ... /s/, /l/, /ĕ/, /d/. The first phoneme, or sound, is /s/. What's the grapheme ... 's'. The second phoneme, or sound ... /l/. Grapheme ... 'l'. /ĕ/, grapheme ... 'e', right? And the final phoneme, or sound, in the word sled is /d/, which graphene ... the 'd', right? Let's write that ... 's', 'l', 'e', 'd' ... sled.

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Narrator: When you are teaching a tricky spelling pattern, it's important to be crystal clear with your students. Watch Teacher Princess Watts-Blount deliver explicit and direct instruction to our first graders about 'dr'. One of the tricky 'r' blends.

Princess Watts-Blount: All right, so as I mentioned today, we're talking about tricky blends. Okay? Tricky 'r' blends specifically. The first one we're going to focus on is 'dr'. Who could tell me why this one is so tricky? Yes, Leo.

Leo: Because it sounds like 'jr'.

Princess Watts-Blount: Exactly. It sounds just like 'jr'. Can you guys say it for me?

Students: /jr/.

Princess Watts-Blount: And guess what? I'm glad that Leo told u s that 'dr' sometimes sounds like 'jr', but guess what? 'J' and 'r', they don't like to hang out together. They're not BFFs, so we will not see 'j' and 'r' working together. Okay, I'd like for you guys to repeat after me. Drip.

Students: Drip.

Princess Watts-Blount: Drain.

Students: Drain.

Princess Watts-Blount: Dress.

Students: Dress.

Princess Watts-Blount: Drink.

Students: Drink.

Princess Watts-Blount: What was the beginning blend in all of those words?

Students: /dr/.

Princess Watts-Blount: What was the beginning blend?

Students: 'Dr'.

Princess Watts-Blount: 'Dr'. Yes, 'dr.' Alright. So 'dr' is one of our tricky, tricky blends. Okay.

Narrator:

Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Hastings Quillen Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the AFT, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and anonymous donors. Special thanks to Burgess-Peterson Academy and Atlanta Public Schools. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel @RUTeaching. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington D.C., the Barksdale Reading Institute and First Book.

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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/