Reading is an essential skill that all children must learn, but it can be difficult for them to recognize the sounds in words. That’s where sound games come in. These games involve two strategies: blending and segmenting.
Blending involves adding different sounds together to read a word. For example, to read the word ‘hop,’ the child may first say the individual sounds in the word that are h, o, and p and then add them together to say ‘hop.’
On the other hand, segmenting means to break a word down into the individual sounds that it contains. If we take the ‘hop’ example again, then segmenting this word would involve separating the word into h, s, and p sounds.
The Advantages Of Sound Games
Blending and segmenting games are significant because they help children read better. These games help students learn how to read words independently by assisting them in understanding the different sounds and syllables that make up each word.
Once students learn how to identify the different sounds and blend them together, they can read independently without having to memorize the sound of each new word that they come across.
Blending Games
Many blending games can be used in the classroom. A good one for younger children involves speaking slowly and enunciating each sound separately. To play this game, point to a picture of a car, for example. Then say the word car extremely slowly, like “ccaarrr.”
Ask the children to say the word with you to learn to blend the different sounds and form a word. Or you could say the individual sounds like c, a, and r and ask children to blend them on their own to create the whole word.
Segmenting Games
A great way of teaching children to break down words into individual sounds or phonemes is through the segmenting song. You can make up your own song and even keep changing the word that needs to be segmented whenever you need to teach the class how to break down a new word.
We recommend starting with 3 phoneme words because that’s easier for children in the beginning stages.
When you sing this song, make sure you sing a word like ‘hat’ and then ask the children to tell you the beginning sound, then the middle sound, and finally the ending sound. This way they will learn all the sounds and have fun too.
Concluding Thoughts
Blending and segmenting games are vital when it comes to developing good reading skills in children. This is why children must be taught these two methods from a very young age.