Super Reader
Challenge
Tasks to develop phonemic awareness
and blending skills
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As discussed in the session, phonemic awareness is the most vital skill towards reading success.
If your child cannot hear the sounds that form words or if your child cannot blend words orally,
reading will always be a challenge. Therefore, the first step towards confident reading is to work
upon and develop phonemic awareness and blending skills orally.
Kindly work on the 5 tasks given below with your child for a few days/weeks, before they begin
to read actual words.
Important Note: None of the tasks involve reading of words and the
implementation has to be done ORALLY.
Task 1 - Oral Blending
This is a very important technique to be practiced with the child, to give them a strong head start
to confident blending and reading. You can start working with this amazing method with your
child (From 18 months up to any age). I highly recommend you to practice it on a daily basi s,
because it involves both Phonemic Awareness Development and Blending together
How to practice Oral Blending:
You simply pick 2 letter words and then eventually move to 3 letter words, where you Segment
(break), Stretch (elongating the vowel sound a little) and Blend words ORALLY and your child will
repeat the same after you.
Please Note: The child should not be made to read the words you practice here and they are to
be done ORALLY only.
Important Note: If your child is between 18 to 24 months and cannot speak or repeat the oral
blending task as given above, then you segment, stretch and blend words orally and let your child
listen to it. Even if your child cannot repeat the words because their speaking skills are still under
development, simply listening to these word break ups would do wonders for them.
Begin with 2 sound words as mentioned below:
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ab: aaaaaab (Here you elongate and stretch the vowel sound a little, connect the sound /b/) and
blend it together to say ‘ab’. Let the child repeat the same after you.
ba: baaaaa (Make sure you don’t elongate the /b/ sound to avoid distortion and simply connect
it to the vowel sound /a/ which will be elongated) and then blend them together to say ‘ba’. Let
the child repeat the same after you.
In the same way you can oral blend words like:
at ta an am ca ot on op un up in if ip
it et en egg ut ap ag iz ill or um uz
Please Note: Make sure you do not add the extra uhhhh in any of these sounds, as it will distort
the sounds.
You can then move towards 3 sound words, where you simply Segment, Stretch and Blend the
word and the child will repeat the same after you.
Bat: baaaaaat bat
As the example above, practice oral blending the words given below:
tab nap jam bag sun
doll tap man cap hat
fan cab pet tin van
jet kiss lip rug mum
dad run den kid pot
Task 2 – Phoneme Matching
The ability to identify words that begin with the same sound. Here you can give 2 words (words
having 3 sounds) to the child that begin with the same sound and ask them to identify the
common sound in them.
Please Note: It’s always a good idea to keep the beginning sounds common in both words to start
with. And then gradually move to words having ending sounds in common and then giving words
where the common sound can be in any position.
Example:
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Can you identify the common sound in words baaaaalllll ball and baaaaaack back (This is how you
will segment, stretch and blend the words, for the child to hear all the sounds and come to a
conclusion).
The child will answer: Both words have /b/ sound in common.
Similarly you can give the below pair of words to your child to identify the common sounds:
taaaaab tab and taaaaawllll tall
sssuuuuunnn sun and sssaaaat sat
jam and jog
cat and car
fan and fur
rat and run
lip and lock
You can then move to giving 3 words to your child and ask them to identify the common sound
in them.
ball, back, bun
jam, jog, jet
fan, fur, fall
lip, lock, lace
cat, car, cop
sun, sat, sell
tab, tall, tuck
Please Note: Make sure you segment, stretch and blend all the words given above as shown
earlier for the examples tab & tall and sun & sat.
You can come up with different words like given above for more practice.
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Please Note: These words are not to be seen or read by the child, you will say them orally and
your child will answer them orally. It’s all about making them listen to the different sounds that
comprise of a word and create awareness towards the same.
Task 3 – Phoneme Isolation
The ability to isolate or identify a single sound from within a word.
Can you recognize the beginning sound in word ‘caaaaannn can (Answer: /c/).
Can you recognize the ending sound in the same word ‘caaaaannn can (Answer: /n/)
This is how you can segment, stretch and blend words and ask the child to identify the beginning
and ending sounds in that word to begin with. The middle sound can be confusing for some
learners and it should be avoided initially. But as the child masters this activity, you can also ask
them to identify the middle sounds in words.
You can explore and use words the same set of words from Task 1 and 2 for this activity.
Task 4 – Phoneme Blending
The ability to blend individual sounds into a word. Here, you simply have to segment and stretch
the sounds and let your child blend those sounds and say the word.
Example: You will ask the child to blend the sounds for baaaaat and the child will answer bat.
(Please ensure you are ONLY segmenting and stretching the sounds, not blending them to say
the word)
Similarly, you can explore and use the words given in Task 1 and 2 for the child to blend them
orally.
Please Note: These words are for oral practice and the child should not be seeing and reading
these words.
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Task 5 – Phoneme Segmentation
The ability to segment (break) individual sounds from a word. Here, you simply say a word and
the child will segment, stretch and blend that word for you.
Example: You will say the word ‘bat’ and ask the child to segment the same into individual sounds
and then finally blend to say the word. The child will segment (break) the word as baaaaaat bat.
Similarly, you can explore and use the words given in Task 1 and 2 for the child to segment them
orally.
Please Note: These words are for oral practice and the child should not be seeing and reading
these words.
A Very Important Note: To make Task 1, 4 and 5 more interesting and easy, you can use the
images given below and help the child do Oral Blending, Phoneme Blending and Phoneme
Segmentation.
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doll, hen, jam, mat, sun, van, fox, ball, hat, bat, cat, rat
pen, dog, net, moon, book, car, pot, dot, hut, nut, cut, cake
bag, tap, fan, map, man, bed, leg, ten, bin, mop, rod, jog
mum, jug, bug, tub, cub, gum, bun, pin, pig, cup, fish, leaf