In my last entry on blending, I mentioned about making pupils understand the concept of blending. I found the approach worked for my target students and I feel there is a need to emphasize on the concept every now and then, especially when you introduce new sounds and words. It helps making sense of the sounds they have smoothed out.

I tried robot talk blending with my learners and sadly it did not work. I even made a robot for this purpose.  I presume the situation occur because my target students were not familiar with the words. In order to successfully blend words, the exposure to words, direct or indirect, is crucial in building the background idea on words. We can do this by singing, jazz chanting or story telling. Our learners will be familiarize with the words and blending will be easy. The pyramid below agrees to this.

Picture from Reading Rocket

So, what did I do?

I decided to try race car blending. I need to experience it myself on how the intervention will work. I borrowed a toy car from my children toy basket and give it a go.

Using onset and rime, I asked my target students to glide the car from one end to another and say the sound when the car pass through them. It was difficult at first but after 2 sessions, I find them concentrating hard to blend the two sounds and Alhamdulillah, success was very sweet indeed.





I am optimistic of this intervention and I know if done consistently, our learners will be able to understand the concept of blending and be able to blend successfully. True, it is hard work. but having known teachers with perseverance as their best friend, rest assured everything will work just fine.

I miss interacting with young learners. I hope these students benefit something from our sessions. I wish them many more success to come.