What are blends or clusters?

Blends & Consonant Clusters

Consonant clusters or blends, are the names given to two or three consonants that appear together in a word. Each consonant retains its sound when blended. The term cluster refers to the written form and the term blend refers to the spoken form.
Consonant clusters consist of four major categories:

• r-clusters
• s-clusters
• l-clusters
• 3 letter clusters

The consonant blends are the most regular. Blending skills are improved if the initial blends are practised on their own, e.g. cr, fl, str, etc. This makes it easier to read the words that have initial consonant blends. The children are encouraged to work the word out by saying the blend, followed by the individual sounds, e.g. 'cr-a-b, st-a -m-p, fl-a -g', etc. 

You can teach beginning consonant clusters as soon as children have learnt the single consonant sound-spellings.

r-blends: br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr,

s-blends: sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw,

l-blends: bl, cl, fl, gl, pl.

3 letter blends: scr, str, spr thr, chr, phr, shr. The consonant clusters thr, chr, phr, shr, are made up of a consonant digraph and a consonant.

Ending blends: ct, ft, ld, lp, lt, mp, nd, nk, nt, pt, rd, rk, sk, sp, st (teach these last)

* Consonant Digraphs: consist of two consonants that when blended make one sound: sh, ch, th, wh, ph, gh, ng (We will see this in deph at another step)

Exceptions: The consonant blend sc can stand for the /sk/ sound as inscare or the /c/ can be silent as in science. Also, the consonant cluster ck represents one sound – /k/.

Most other consonant clusters will almost always stand for the blended sound of each consonant, which makes them very reliable and worthy of teaching to your child.

Activities

- Blend the sounds individually and then quickly (cards)

- Can you think of a word containing...?

- Wordblender game

- Cluster Tiles: Initial blends and Final blends

- Cononant blends Loop Game