Orton-Gillingham Multisensory Tools: Blending Drill

Orton Gillingham Multisensory Tools: The Blending Drill

The goal of the blending drill is to strengthen students overall fluency. The more our students practice blending previously learned sounds, the more automatic they will become in their overall reading.

Materials needed for the blending drill are really simple. We need our card pack of previously learned sounds, with keyword stickers, and our blending board. The blending board is rather lightweight and can be held by the teacher during the blending drill, or set up on a table at the front of the classroom or group. The two slats ensure the teacher can change cards effortlessly, placing already used cards in the back slat.

Teachers want to make sure students are actively pointing to each card, saying the sound, then blending all the sounds together to read the word while swiping from left to right. The teacher is encouraged to try and avoid pointing with the students, to build more independent reading.

The blending drill is a built-in assessment of your students’ retention of previously learned material. If they are miscuing often, this tells us we may need to go back and review or reteach challenging skills that have been previously introduced. The phonological awareness skill of blending may also need revisiting, as this is a foundational skill necessary for fluency in reading.

Enjoy!

Written by Angelina Spiteri-Bender

Angelina is an Instructor with Brainspring Educator Academy. She is also the director of Brainspring’s Grosse Pointe Learning Center.

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