Successive Blending

What is Successive Blending: Successive blending is a decoding strategy that teaches early readers to blend one sound at a time in sequential order rather than blending all the sounds at once. For example, if the student is decoding the word bag, they would say the sounds for /b/ and /a/ then blend them and say ba. Then they repeat ba and add the final sound of t. Sometimes it is helpful for the student to stretch the vowel sound before adding the last sound as in “baaaa…..t”

Who Needs Successive Blending: Not every student will need this decoding strategy. Successive blending is helpful for students who have trouble with phoneme blending. They may know each letter sound but when they blend, /b/ /a/ /g/ it may come out as ag or even tag. Successive blending is also helpful for students who have difficulty recalling letter sounds. By the time they’ve reached the last sound, they have forgotten the first two sounds. With successive blending, they only have to remember a bigger chunk, rather than individual sounds.