Consonants
Consonant blends
A blend is two or three consonants read together where each keeps its own sound, as in “stop”, “flag”, “drum” and “split”. Blends are a fluency skill more than a decoding one: the sounds are already known, and what is new is holding them together fast enough to hear the word.
Beginning blends and ending blends are usually taught apart, and ending blends are the harder of the two because the reader has to hold the vowel while resolving two consonants.
Patterns and example words
Every word below is from the word list Cody generates from, not a hand-picked sample. The count is how many words in that list carry the pattern.
l blends
5,242 wordspeople place placed places placing play played playing
r blends
14,056 wordsfrom children problem problems great greater greatest greats
s blends
5,182 wordsstill start started starting starts school schooled schooling
3-letter beg. blends
993 wordsthrough strong stronger strongest street streets structure structured
3 letter beg. blends without digraphs
1,171 wordsstrong stronger strongest street streets structure structured structures
blends with w
2,749 wordsbetween question questioned questioning questions always quite answer
Curricula that teach this
Cody generates material against the scope and sequence you already teach. This skill appears in Cody Curriculum, Custom Pattern Selection, UFLI Inspired, Wilson Reading System.
Make a decodable story for this skill
Cody generates stories, word lists and worksheets constrained to the patterns a student has already been taught, so practice on consonant blends does not smuggle in something they have not met yet.