Routine · Phonological awareness
Say it slow, say it fast
Blend spoken sounds into a word, then break a spoken word back into its sounds.
- Time
- 2 to 4 minutes
- Skill
- Phonological awareness
- In a session plan
- Warm-up
When to use it
A daily warm-up through the phonics sequence, especially for students who struggle to blend when reading.
Materials
- Spoken words from the lesson, such as {word}
Steps
Shown with example words: word ship.
Get ready
Tell the student you will say words very slowly and very fast. Use one finger per sound.
I do
Say the sounds of ship with a finger up for each, then sweep your hand and say the word fast.
Say: Slow: one sound per finger. Fast: ship.
We do
Say the sounds of the next word slowly and blend it together with the student. Then say a whole word and break it up together.
You do
Alternate: you say sounds, the student says the word; you say a word, the student says the sounds on their fingers.
Student: Blends sounds into words, and breaks words into sounds with a finger for each.
Check
Give one word to blend and one to break apart. Listen for every sound in order.
If the student...
Blends the sounds into a different word.
Say the sounds again a little closer together, say the word, and have the student say it. Then repeat the sounds and let them try once more.
Leaves out a sound when breaking a word apart.
Model the word slowly with a finger for each sound. Do it together, then the student does it alone from the start.
Say: Watch my fingers. Every sound gets a finger. Again with me. Now you.
Tips
- Use words from today's lesson so the warm-up feeds straight into reading them.
- Move from words with two sounds, to three, to four with a blend as the student gets quicker.
- One to one, let the student also be the teacher for a word or two. It shows you what they hear.
Example words
- Word
- ship
Original routines written by Literacy Trail. In the app, every routine is filled with your student's lesson.
Related routines
- Phoneme blendingHear a word said one sound at a time and put the sounds together into the word.2 to 4 minutes · Warm-up
- Sound boxes with tokensPush one token into a box for each sound in a spoken word.3 to 5 minutes · Warm-up
- Sound-by-sound blendingRead a new word one sound at a time, joining each sound to the ones before it.3 to 6 minutes · Word reading
- Clap the syllablesJoin spoken syllables into a word, then clap a word back into its syllables.2 to 4 minutes · Warm-up
Have this routine filled in for every lesson
In Literacy Trail, the session plan picks a routine for each block and fills it with the words, sounds and sentence from your student's lesson. Every plan starts with a 15-day free trial.