Segmenting and blending?

[Guest ChunkyMan]

Am I being thick or something but are children expected to orally and aurally segment and blend prior to recognising grapheme (phase 1) or is it something to be done together. Has Ruth Miskin written this part of the Development Matters as it fits quite nicely with RWi? The reason why I ask this is because the children in my F2 class this year started RWi in the last term of F1 (on the advice of RWi rep) and about 2 thirds now know most of their initial sounds, however only about a quarter of the class can segment and blend consistently, my arguement is that , in my opinion unless they are secure with segmenting and blending (don't start me on rhyming and alliteration!!!!) they are just learning shapes which have little meaning - am I making sense.

The new development matters don't seem to make this clear.

 

Cx

Edited October 9, 2012 by ChunkyMan

[Susan]

Yes, you make sense! And I would probably agree with you. Robot talk is step 7 of phase 1 and I would think getting that established in FS1 is more important than learning GPCs.

[Froglet]

I would agree. This year we have devoted more time to focusing on Phase 1 alone at the start of the year. We know several of our nurseries and pre-schools do it and so have always done it alonside :Phase 2 in the past. Having done it on its own I can hear how much more confidently they've suddenly become at it. Am looking forward to seeing the impact it has on their reading and writing!

[catma]

Unless you can tune into sounds and understand blending and segmenting, then children generally will struggle with moving forward into confident reading despite having PGCs. (I know there are those who learn to read by sight by the age of 3 but I'm talking about the general majority here!)

[Guest]

Phonological awareness - the ability to discriminated sounds in words is often over looked as schools plough through their phonics programmes. This however is a fundamental skill and if not address can cause difficulties in blending and segmenting sounds for reading and spelling.

[Guest]

Blending and segmenting is something I am concentrating on this year as I have lots of children who have GPC but can't hear the sounds within Cvc words! I am spending time on phase 1 phonics sound talking with puppets and instructions as well as PD eg h-o-p c-l-a-p etc. I think they will be more confident writers when they can sound out for themselves and have a go