Blending Words: Stop Consonants and a Linky Party

When I went to training a few weeks back, I learned about stop consonants.  I had never heard of them before.  Please forgive me if this is "old" news!!

Stop consonants are consonants that are formed when the flow of air is completely stopped  somewhere in the vocal apparatus, and then the air is released.  

What are the stop consonants?

  /b/     /d/    /g/     /k/      /p/       /t/ 

If you practice saying them and then compare them to other consonants, you'll see how the air flow is different.  I'm sure we looked ridiculous at this training saying /t/ /m/  /p/  /f/  over and over so we could see the difference the sounds make :)

Why is this important in blending?
It is much harder for emergent readers to blend words that begin with a stop consonant.

When teaching beginning blending, it is much easier to start with words that DO NOT begin with a stop consonant.

 It is much easier for emergent readers to blend

than it is for them to blend

This way incredibly eye opening for me to learn this.  I felt like this was an easy "thing" to implement, and I know when I have had students blend words in the past, I didn't know that some consonants are harder to blend than others. 

 

Linky Party

I thought this linky party was fun.  I'm kind of obsessive compulsive :) This is what I brought home.

 For the first time in 5 years, I did not have to move rooms at the end of the year!!!!  I actually was able to get almost everything filed and all my binders cleaned/organized!!  This was HUGE!!! I had to move the bookroom, but that is different ;)  Here is my "stuff"!!!

I brought home a tub of my favorite teacher resources along with a few notebooks and papers that need to be filed.  I also brought home a small crate that has the files that still need to be cleaned.  Guess what? Until this linky, I hadn't pulled out this "stuff" all summer :)  I store it under my table in the craft room.  You can link up with Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge by clicking on the link below!