Blending and Combining Consonant Sounds
In these lessons children will add to their decoding skills, and greatly increase their reading vocabulary, by sounding out words that contain blends and digraphs. A consonant blend occurs when two or more consonants come together in a word. The individual sounds blend together, but each sound is still heard (for example, drum, flag, and swim). A consonant digraph occurs when two consonants come together and form a single sound (for example, ship, path, and chain). The consonants in a digraph do not retain their individual sounds.

In the 18 lessons in this unit, children will learn:

• r blends – br, cr, dr, fr, pr, and tr
• l blends – bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, and sl
• s blends – sk, sm, sn, sp, st, and sw
• three-letter blends – scr, spl, spr, squ, and str
• final blends, such as -ft, -mp, -nd, -gn, -nk, -nt, -sk, and -st
• consonant digraphs – sh, ch, th, and wh
• to read words with blends and digraphs

With the addition of the skills in this unit, beginning readers are now ready to combine words to form ideas and read for understanding. Several lessons in this unit introduce these reading skills: reading for facts (factual comprehension) and reading for meaning (inferential comprehension).

The Blends and Digraphs unit includes:

• 18 Lesson Cards with a variety of games, activities, and follow-up quizzes
• 18 Pretest/Posttest assessment pages, one for each lesson