
What is oral blending and segmenting?
Oral Blending and Segmenting – Before Letters, There Were Sounds! The ability to segment words into sounds and the ability to blend sounds into words (oral blending and segmenting) are vital prerequisite skills for spelling and reading. Young children learning the English language initially perceive words as whole units, as their focus is meaning.
What is oral segmenting in early childhood education?
Before children learn to write words, they need to orally segment. Segmenting is simply the skill of separating words up into their component sounds. For example, ‘pig’ becomes ‘p-i-g’.
What is segmenting in reading?
What is Segmenting? Segmenting is the ability to break up spoken words into their separate sounds. For example, as we spell the word ‘fish’, we segment it into its three sounds, also known as phonemes. Oral segmenting is a phonemic awareness skill and a crucial building block of independent reading and writing.
How do you develop segmenting skills in English?
Segmenting into Words Development of the skill of segmenting should begin with segmenting sentences into words. Start with very short sentences and build up to longer sentences. Before introducing the visual concept of gaps between words, use physical movement to represent the boundaries between words.

What does orally segment mean?
What is Oral Segmentation? Oral Segmentation is when students will hear a word and break it up into its syllables or by phonemes. For example for a student to segment a word by its phonemes, the teacher would say the word “top” and the students would stretch out the word to say each sound slowly- /t/…/o/…/p/.
What is oral blending and segmenting?
Segmenting is when a word is broken down into separate sounds and syllables. For example ro-bot. Blending happens when those separate syllables and sounds are put together to form a word. Blending and segmenting are big parts of learning phonics.
What is an example of segmenting words?
Segmenting is the ability to break up spoken words into their separate sounds. For example, as we spell the word 'fish', we segment it into its three sounds, also known as phonemes. Oral segmenting is a phonemic awareness skill and a crucial building block of independent reading and writing.
What does word segmenting mean?
Segmenting involves identifying the individual sounds (phonemes) in a word. Students should practice segmenting initial sounds, onset-‐rime, and individual sounds in a word. Segmenting tasks take place orally without the written word.
What is difference between blending and segmenting?
Blending is the process of combining sounds together to create a word. For example, the word cat is made up of three sounds /c/-/a/-/t/ together these sounds produce the spoken word cat. Segmenting is the process of breaking a word down into its individual sounds.
How do you do an oral blend?
Ten oral blending activitiesGive Instructions. ... Use a puppet or toy. ... Say something wrong. ... Hide simple items in a sound box. ... Have some small objects set out. ... At home time or play time, give out cards that feature pictures of CVC words. ... Play the above game in reverse. ... Play 'I Spy' using sound-talk.More items...
How do you teach segmenting words?
How to teach blending and segmentingStart with words that have only two phonemes (for example, am, no, in)Begin with continuous sounds (phonemes that can be held for a beat or two without distorting the sound). ... Then, introduce a few stop sounds (phonemes that cannot be held continuously).More items...
How do you segment a word?
To segment a word into its phonemes:Say the word to be segmented out loud, slowly.Segment the word into its individual phonemes by repeating the word but stretching out each phoneme in the word, e.g. mouse – m/ou/se.
What are segmentation methods?
4 Methods of SegmentationGeographic Segmentation. Geographic segmentation is beneficial for a large-scale campaign execution when the product to be promoted is largely understood and needed by a wide and diverse group of consumers. ... Demographic Segmentation. ... Psychographic Segmentation. ... Behavioral Segmentation.
Why is segmenting words important?
Segmentation is a crucial skill in learning to spell since being able to split words up into their separate speech sounds helps students to encode unfamiliar words, giving them an advantage in learning to spell. Difficulty with segmentation is a hallmark of the struggling speller / reader.
What are the four bases of segmentation?
Demographic, psychographic, behavioral and geographic segmentation are considered the four main types of market segmentation, but there are also many other strategies you can use, including numerous variations on the four main types. Here are several more methods you may want to look into.
What comes first segmenting or blending?
Blending is linked to reading, segmenting linked to writing. Therefore, blending should come before segmenting, as you want to get children starting to read some words before they need to start writing them. Also, blending is a slightly easier skill to master as it relies more on listening.
What is phoneme blending and segmentation?
Blending is a skill needed for reading. Segmenting is used for writing. Whereas blending involves merging the phonemes (sounds) you hear together to make words, segmenting is the process of splitting words up into their phonemes.
How do you teach segmenting and blending?
How to teach blending and segmentingStart with words that have only two phonemes (for example, am, no, in)Begin with continuous sounds (phonemes that can be held for a beat or two without distorting the sound). ... Then, introduce a few stop sounds (phonemes that cannot be held continuously).More items...
What comes first segmenting or blending?
Blending is linked to reading, segmenting linked to writing. Therefore, blending should come before segmenting, as you want to get children starting to read some words before they need to start writing them. Also, blending is a slightly easier skill to master as it relies more on listening.
What does blending mean in phonics?
Phonics blending is a way for students to decode words. With phonics blending, students fluently join together the individual sound-spellings (also called letter-sound correspondence) in a word. With a word like jam, students start by sounding out each individual sound-spelling (/j/, /ă/, /m/).
What is orally segmenting?
Before children learn to write words, they need to orally segment. Segmenting is simply the skill of separating words up into their component sounds. For example, ‘pig’ becomes ‘p-i-g’. ‘Dog’ becomes ‘d-o-g’.
How long should a child learn to segment?
It is best taught in a little and often way when they are ready. Just five minutes a day is fine. Use a mixture of the activities in this article and your children should start segmenting confidently.
What is the pin in sound talk?
The puppet picks out an object and the children try to say the name of the item in sound talk. For example, the pin would be ‘p-i-n.
How to teach children to put a three sound word on their finger?
Get the children to show you three fingers. Now get them to ‘put’ a three-sound word onto their fingers, e.g. pot. For example, they put ‘p’ onto their ring finger, ‘o’ onto their middle finger, and ‘t’ onto their index finger. They point to each in turn, saying ‘p-o-t’, and then go back to their ring finger and sweep over the three fingers whilst saying ‘pot’.
What is Oral Segmentation?
Oral Segmentation is when students will hear a word and break it up into its syllables or by phonemes. For example for a student to segment a word by its phonemes, the teacher would say the word “top” and the students would stretch out the word to say each sound slowly- /t/…/o/…/p/. This is the FIRST step to having your students be able to sound out words to spell them!
How to practice sound words?
Have them hold up the corresponding number of fingers to sounds. Once they can do 3 sound words, you can add in blends, digraphs , 4-5 sound words to practice this skill.
How to teach children to segment words?
Ask the children to think of other scenarios which they could tell the toy or let them give him instructions. Then model the sound-talk for the children to repeat. This is teaching the children to segment words into their separate sounds or phonemes and is the reverse of blending. The children will soon begin to start the segmenting themselves.
What is oral blending?
Oral blending can also be modelled from time to time when books are being shared, particularly rhyming books where the last word in a rhyming couplet could be segmented into separate sounds and then blended by the adult.
Why is oral blending important?
It is important that the children have plenty of experience of listening to adults modelling oral blending before they are introduced to graphemephoneme correspondences. For example, when giving children instructions or asking questions the adult can segment the last word into separate phonemes and then immediately blend ...
What is the purpose of phonemes?
Main purpose: to listen to phonemes within words and to remember them in order in which they occur
Why is it important to watch the adult's face and mouth?
Using a toy is preferable to a puppet because it is important that children watch the adult’s face and mouth to see the sounds being articulated clearly , rather than focusing on the imitated movements of the puppet.
Why is it important to segment and blend the last word in a sentence?
Over time and with lots of repetition, the children will get to know the routine and as they gain confidence they will provide the blended word before the adult.
What is the purpose of sound talk for children?
Avoid being tempted to ask any questions in between such as I wonder what that word can be? or Do you know what that word is? The purpose is to model oral blending and immediately give the whole word.
What is Segmenting?
Segmenting is the ability to break up spoken words into their separate sounds. For example, as we spell the word ‘fish’, we segment it into its three sounds, also known as phonemes.
How to segment words?
Segment words using your fingers or as I call it ‘Phoneme Fingers’. This allows children to attach a phoneme to the visual of a finger. They will then be able to ‘see’ how many phonemes are in the word. Next, ask the children to use their fingers as they segment words.
Is segmenting automatic?
For most of our students, segmenting is not automatic. It is not ‘caught’ like one catches a cold; children need to be explicitly taught how to listen to sounds in words so that they can segment words into phonemes. As a classroom teacher of 5- and 6-year-old students, I knew the benefit of the segmenting skill to spell unfamiliar words; especially as the phonological form of spelling requires segmenting as one of the strategies.
What is Oral Blending?
Oral blending is hearing sounds (or syllables), and being able to blend them to make the word. For example, the teacher says “/b/…/a/…/t/”, the student listens, repeats the sounds, then says the word “bat”.
How many sounds can you blend in kindergarten?
You can do oral blending with words that have 2, 3, 4, 5 or more sounds! Typically in Kindergarten, you should stick with words that have 2-4 sounds, but by the end of the year, students will be able to possibly blend words with 4 or 5 words.

Segmenting Into Words
Singing and Segmenting Into syllables
- When teachers have children accompany both syllables and sounds with clapping, the children often end up struggling to differentiate a syllable from a sound. I ask children to sing syllables (as in “Hap-py-birth-day-to-you”) and make the connection between syllables, rhythm and music. The notes used are irrelevant. Discriminate first between one- and two-syllable words, then two- and …
Blending syllables
- Blending is the inverse of segmenting. Teaching the two skills side by side will help children to understand that relationship. Begin instruction in blending with compound words. Say each segment with a time-lapse long enough to challenge working memory (e.g. ‘foot – ball’) and ask the children to say the word faster, as one unit.
Blending Phonemes
- When segmenting words into phonemes, the child stretches the word (and his elastic band or slinky). When he blends phonemes, he pushes the sounds (hands, elastic band or slinky) back into the original position. If he is using a phoneme frame, he can be asked to slide his finger quickly underneath each box, saying the sound in each box in order. The image of children on a slippery …