Blending Words

Building academic language

Word

• Display the visual Vocabulary Cards and provide student-friendly definitions for the new words, in both English and L1 (home language) as you are able.
• Have the students think about some words that they hear or see often (e.g., mom, dad, go, stop) and record these on the board for reference.
• Explain that you are going to demonstrate how to segment a word into the individual letter sounds and then blend it together again, using your car!
• Take your car and place it on the letter H on the board. Model how to say the letter sound /hhh/. Then, "drive" to the letter A and repeat, /aaa/. Finally, end with the letter T sound, /ttt/.
• Repeat this process a second time, this time driving faster and modeling how to blend the sounds together into the word "hat."

Sentence

• Write up a new CVC word on the board (e.g., sun, rat) in the same format as the word hat.
• Ask students to say the letter sound slowly as you drive over each letter.
• Repeat this process, this time driving faster until the students have blended the segmented word into the complete word.
• Model creating a sentence aloud using one of the CVC words. Next, encourage students to do a Think-Pair-Share with a partner, orally sharing a sentence or two that includes one of the CVC words they practiced.
• Practice driving over additional words as a group for further practice.
• Pair students up and pass out a toy car and segmented word (using the pre-written index cards) to each pair.
• Have students practice driving slowly and then faster over the letters to practice reading their words.
• If time allows, have pairs trade word cards with another pair for additional practice.