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Continuous Blending: An Effective Scaffold for Supporting Decoding

"What is Continuous Blending" text on the left with an image of continuous blending slides on an ipad on the right

Do you have students that struggle to blend words together after saying each sound? Do they say a different word? Or reverse letters in initial and final position? This struggle is not too uncommon, especially for students with weak phonological working memory, or those still developing in phonemic awareness skills. Students in the partial alphabetic and full alphabetic phase of reading may also display these behaviors. Thankfully, continuous blending, or connected phonation, is a great support for these students.

What is Continuous Blending?

Imagine a stream of water from a faucet that you are using to fill a cup. You can stop the stream by turning off the faucet. Water can come out in choppy amounts, but water is still coming out and cup is being filled. Or, you can leave the faucet running and water will come out in one amount. That’s similar to the differences between traditional sound by sound blending and continuous blending. With traditional blending, each sound is given in isolation. When those isolated sounds are put together, the word is blended. With continuous blending, sounds are stretched and connected together, flowing from one sound to the next. It’s free flowing rather than isolated and choppy.

The steps for Continuous blending step by step

Why is Continuous Blending Beneficial?

As mentioned before, many students struggle with blending words as they read. Most students struggle for just a short period of time and their phonemic awareness skills advance rather quickly. For others, trying to read even the simplest of words can be laborious. Continuous blending is a natural scaffold for those students as they are able to speed up the sounds as they attempt to blend them. It can be applied with the simplest of word patterns- vc and cvc words, helping support students right from the start as they begin trying to read.

  • Enhances Phonemic Awareness: By smoothly blending sounds, students strengthen their ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds within words.
  • Boosts Confidence: The flowing motion can make reading feel more natural and less daunting for some students. As students successfully use continuous blending,
  • Provides Scaffolds: When beginning to read words with consonant blends, and adding that 4th sound into words, continuous blending can help support students, even if they didn’t need support initially. Blending an additional sound, and keeping it in a student’s phonological working memory, can be a difficult transition for some. Continuous blending helps ease that transition since each sound is heard.

 

Tips for Continuous Blending

Continuous blending has some key components to consider as you implement it with students.

  • Continuous Sounds: Continuous blending should initially be done with only continuous sounds in non-final positions. This is essential for the blending to be continuous, or connected. Not sure what the continuous sounds are? Watch my video below that compares continuous and stop sounds.
  • Build complexity: As students get more proficient with reading words using continuous blending, there are two ways you can add complexity to support students’ further reading development.

First, you can introduce stop sounds in the initial position. This means students that first sound is unable to be held as the other sounds are added. Since all vowel sounds are continuous, it naturally helps students blend the rime. This is a great way to push students forward as they only have to hold the one stop sound in their working memory as they work to blend the onset and rime.

Another way to add complexity is by introducing blends, or words containing 4 sounds rather than 3. Continuous blending can continue to be done with blends, as long as each sound in the blend is a continuous sound. Final s blends are a great one to use as the stop sound is in the final position in the word. Otherwise S and F blends are also great initial blends to use, so long as the second sound is also a continuous sound. Just as mentioned before, once students have become proficient with blending 4 sound words with continuous sounds in non-final positions, the complexity can again be increased by inserting a non-continuous sound within the word.

You may find that some students develop proficiency with decoding CVC words with initial stop sounds but then need the scaffold of using all continuous sounds in order to successfully recode words with blends.

  • Add manipulatives: Manipulatives provide a great concrete reinforcement for students as hold and stretch sounds during connected phonation, especially if they are reading a printed or oral word rather than manipulating letter tiles. I like to use counters, toy cars, and even small Junior Slinkys to reinforce the stretch and connection used during connected phonation. Please note: Links are to items on Amazon where I receive a very small product commission for your purchase at no additional cost to you. 

Continuous Blending vs. Successive Blending

Continuous blending and successive blending are both strategies for supporting students struggling to correctly blend words as they’re reading. With continuous blending, the focus is on connecting the phonemes in the word together. This is why it’s also referred to as connected phonation.

With successive blending, each sound is added on, successively, before adding on the next sound. This means the first sounds are blended together before new sounds are added. There isn’t a focus on using only continuous sounds with this strategy, though that’s obviously a support with successive blending as well. I detail all about successive blending in its own individual post.

What is successive blending text next to student tapping an ipad with cvc word web

Ready to try Continuous Blending?

Continuous blending is a strategy that can be incorporated within your existing phonics and phonemic awareness work. Depending on your scope and sequence of instruction, you can intentionally incorporate continuous blending as students are reading words. While it’s a blending strategy that students can use anytime, students will not be able to apply it to words with stop sounds. For this reason, it’s best done with intentionally chosen words and/or sounds to ensure continuation is possible. This makes it a great tool to incorporate within your small group and intervention instruction.

Card Drills

I start out most of my small group instruction doing card drills to review letter sounds and to practice decoding using phonics and phonemic awareness skills. The routine takes only a few minutes and gives students quick and focused practice on reading a variety of real and nonsense words. I’ve learned that it’s similar (or maybe even the same as) the 3 part drill from OG, but I’ve done it for many years before ever hearing of that method of instruction.

To implement card drills, all you need are letter cards. I have made cards using regular index cards or I’ve also printed ones on my own. After reviewing letter sounds one at a time, I lay the cards out as detailed below to create the stacks for our CVC words (or more complex words if that’s our focus). If you’re doing words with blends, you’ll obviously change this to match that practice.

Step 1: Set up your letter cards

Pile 1 C– all continuous consonants  except for q and x

Pile 2 V– all vowels

Pile 3 C– all stop sounds

It seems like a lot to remember, but it becomes pretty quick and painless once you’ve done it a few times. If you inadvertently include a letter a wrong spot, just move it as you’re practicing.

Step 2: Stretch and blend

Once the cards are set up, you’re reading to blend. Stretch the sounds into each other and blend the word to form the word. Then, flip over one letter to create a new, minimal contrast word and read again.

With card drills, students get exposure and practice with both real and nonsense words just due to the nature of the routine. Practicing with nonsense words, which may seem counterintuitive, actually ensures students aren’t just reading words that are stored in their long-term memory. A great routine is to have students identify the word as a real word or nonsense word before continuing on to the next word.

Continuous Blending Slides

If you’re ready to give continuous blending a try in your classroom, I offer a few sets of Continuous Blending Slides to help you get started. With that said, continuous blending can absolutely be implemented without buying anything special! Just use letter tiles and/or letter cards for the letters and get working!

My CVC Continuous Blending Slides were created for independent practice . Each slide was intentionally created with a continuous sound as the first sound- especially with commonly confused continuous sounds /h/, /w/, & /y/. These are great tools use during literacy centers, independent work, homework, and small group work. Because these include a self-checking or feedback component, students are able to use them to practice independently.

With that said, they are also perfect for whole class practice on a display screen or interactive whiteboard! Just display and walk through the routine together! That’s perfect for special education or other intervention groups, or for beginning readers just working on blending CVC words.

To check out my CVC Continuous Blending Slides click the image below.

CVC Continuous Blending Slides

 

You can also get a set of free continuous blending slides practicing the CK and SH digraphs (individual practice sets) by signing up for my newsletter below. A link to the download containing both Powerpoint and Google Slides slideshows will be sent immediately.
Image of a laptop on a student's desks with mechanical pencils on the side. On the laptop is the word "sack" in colors with an arrow demonstrating complete continuous blending of the word.


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"What is Continuous Blending" text on the top with "Supporting Students with Decoding" subheading under it. On the bottom is an image of continuous blending slides on an ipad.

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