Blending Sounds 1 : Phonics Words for Beginners

Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro is a fun, effective and scientifically based teaching tool which helps beginning readers to use letter-sound knowledge to read words.

The program is based on research into reading acquisition and was developed by speech & language pathologist Dr. Bartek Rajkowski, PhD. Anybody with an interest in teaching children to read can use Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro to help students learn basic decoding skills!

PLEASE NOTE:

• Requires iPad 2 or higher
• This app is Australian! US and UK accents coming in the next update
• Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro is not just a game - it is a powerful and fully customisable teaching tool. Please take some time to experiment with it yourself before trying it with students

Why is the ability to blend (join) speech sounds when reading so important?

Skilled readers are good at understanding that words are made up of speech sounds (a skill called phonemic awareness) and they are also good at understanding how these speech sounds are represented by letters. This knowledge helps children to ‘decode’ unfamiliar words by blending (joining) the speech sounds to recognise the word. Difficulties with these skills are a hallmark of the struggling reader. Furthermore, teaching methods that begin by teaching students letter-sound relationships (called ‘synthetic phonics’ methods) have been shown through research to be more effective than other approaches in teaching reading, regardless of whether students do or do not have reading difficulties. The evidence from the past several decades of reading research is clear: using letter-sound knowledge to decode unfamiliar words is crucial in learning to read, since it helps students to teach themselves new words.

How does Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro help?

Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro uses a patent pending, self-adjusting, multisensory teaching method to help teach beginning and struggling readers to use letter-sound knowledge to decode and recognise simple words with direct letter-sound patterns, such as "cat, stop" and "lost". The teaching system automatically identifies what a child knows, what the child does not know, and which words the child confuses. The app includes a large library of CVC, CCVC and CVCC words and is fully customisable, making it easy to set up custom activities to teach students to read specific word types (such as words ending in -at, or words beginning with st-).

Who should use Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro?

Blending Sounds™ 1 Pro is ideal for helping beginning readers, students with reading difficulties and students learning English as a second language. It is a perfect complement to any phonics program and is fully customisable. We are confident it will quickly become a favourite tool for teachers, parents, reading difficulty specialists and anybody else with an interest in the teaching of reading and spelling!

Features

• Created by a speech-language pathologist specialising in reading development
• Scientifically-based
• Easy to use
• Fun, intuitive and powerful teaching tool
• Perfect for children of all ages learning to read English, including students with learning difficulties and students of English as a second language (ESL)
• Patent-pending, adjustable memory-aid system helps students remember letter-sound patterns
• Create and save custom activities to complement any synthetic phonics approach