decoding Archives - Phonics.org

Blending Board App Review

Jaymi Thiessen on June 21, 2024

A Decoding Practice App With Potential

Take a closer look at literacy learning apps with expert reviews by phonics.org. Keep reading to learn more about this week’s featured app: Blending Board.

What is the Blending Board App?

Blending Board is an innovative educational app designed to offer free dyslexia resources as part of Nadine Gilkison’s Google Innovator project.

Unlike a standalone gaming app, Blending Board serves as a tool for teaching reading through phoneme blending exercises. It is intended for use by educators who organize these exercises using ‘decks,’ which are collections of letter combinations that can be modified to help new readers practice sounding out words and nonwords.

Pre-created decks can be conveniently shared via QR code. Importantly, Blending Board itself does not teach letter sounds or blending; rather, it functions as a supportive tool for educators. It’s not an independent game.

How to Use the Blending Board App

Overall, the Blending Board app is easy to use but is missing some key features. Keep reading to see a more detailed look at the usability of the app.

Navigation

The Blending Board app home page is set up with six initial options:

Create Deck: customize a new set of phonics patterns to practice
Bl: takes you to a pre-created, standard deck
My Decks: access to previously-created decks
Mission: goal and purpose of the app
Settings: customizable color options
QR code reader: access other pre-made decks

The interface is fairly easy to navigate and intuitive to set up. A home screen button in the bottom left corner always brings the user back to the main menu. This design ensures that educators can efficiently manage and utilize the app’s resources.

Accessibility

Blending Board is a free app accessible to all, created specifically to support individuals with dyslexia but beneficial for anyone learning to read words (decode). This app has customizable decks that can cater to individual needs. The app’s neutral appearance ensures it can be effectively used with both young children and adults.

Editing Decks

Editing Decks on the Blending Board app comes with some limitations. Users cannot edit or delete just one deck. If there is a mistake, they must start fresh and create a new deck. Additionally, deleting a deck will result in all decks being deleted, which requires users to recreate any necessary decks from scratch.

Glitches

Blending Board has a few glitches that can affect usability. Sometimes, even when certain graphemes are unselected, they may still appear in the deck. Additionally, there are setup configurations where words cannot be properly formed, such as when the “short vowel pointers” option appears in the middle of a word. These issues can disrupt the intended learning experience and require users to be cautious when creating their decks.

User Engagement in the Blending Board App

These elements enhance the overall engagement when interacting with the Blending Board App.

Neutral Appearance

Blending Board’s neutral appearance ensures it is suitable for learners of any age without appearing babyish to older users. The design is practical and free of distractions, allowing educators and learners to focus on teaching phoneme blending effectively.

A Tool, Not a Game

Blending Board is a tool, not a game. In order to be effective, it requires teacher instruction, modeling, and pre-teaching. The app’s effectiveness and student engagement depend largely on the teacher leading the lessons.

Literacy Learning With the Blending Board App

How does the Blending Board app measure up when it comes to helping someone learn to read?

Important Purpose

Phoneme blending—pushing speech sounds together to read words—is a crucial skill for literacy. Teaching these skills in a specific order (scope and sequence) is also vital for effective learning. The Blending Board app supports both of these aspects, allowing educators to determine the order of phonics skills. However, it is important to note that the app is not designed to include other essential aspects of literacy instruction, such as letter-sound correspondences, comprehension, and vocabulary.

Elkonin Boxes

Elkonin boxes, also known as sound boxes, are a common and effective tool in literacy learning. They help learners segment words into individual sounds, with each box representing one sound. For example, the word “fish” would be divided into three boxes: /f/, /i/, and /sh/.

While the Blending Board app includes similar boxes, they do not always correlate accurately to the sounds. For instance, blends are often placed in one box instead of being separated into two, which can lead to confusion and reduce the effectiveness of this instructional strategy.

Chaining

The Blending Board app offers two options for modifying words. Users can change all letters around, creating a more challenging exercise, or they can tap on a specific grapheme (letter) to change just that one sound. Changing just one sound at a time is called “chaining.” For instance, the word ‘pat’ could be changed to ‘pit’ by tapping the middle letter.

Chaining serves as a helpful scaffold for new readers, reducing the demand on working memory by changing only one sound at a time. This makes it easier for learners to practice reading and spelling, highlighting a good aspect of the app.

Tips for Parents and Educators

To maximize the benefits of the Blending Board app in literacy instruction, follow these guidelines:

1. Scope and Sequence: Choose and use a scope and sequence for teaching phonics skills and create the ‘decks’ in the app according to this order. This structured approach ensures that skills are introduced and practiced in a logical progression.

2. Pre-Teaching: The Blending Board app is a practice tool. Direct, explicit instruction should still come before learners use the app to practice. Educators should introduce phonics skills before students use the app for reinforcement.

3. Discussing Meaning: Engage students in conversations about the words they read. Use the words in sentences to provide context and enhance understanding. The app can generate both real and nonsense words, so it’s important to discuss whether a word is ‘real’ or ‘nonsense.’ For real words, explore their possible meanings with the learners.

4. Parental Involvement: Parents should communicate with their child’s educator to understand which sounds and types of words their child is learning. This allows them to align the Blending Board practice with classroom instruction, ensuring consistency and reinforcement at home.

By following these steps, educators and parents can effectively use the Blending Board app to support literacy development.

How Does the Blending Board App Support Early Readers?

The Blending Board app is relatively easy to use and navigate, making it accessible for educators and learners alike. However, its functionality could be improved with better editing options for the decks, such as the ability to delete one deck at a time or edit a deck after it has been created.

With its neutral appearance, the app is suitable for learners of all ages. While it can be a valuable tool, it should not be used in isolation but rather in conjunction with effective, research-based teaching practices.

The Blending Board app is a supportive tool rather than a standalone learning format. Its primary purpose is to help with decoding real and nonsense words. It doesn’t cover multiple areas of literacy learning.

The app effectively incorporates chaining, which is beneficial for new readers. However, it could be further enhanced by aligning its boxes with the practices used in Elkonin boxes.

Overall, the Blending Board app is a useful resource for phoneme blending exercises but should be integrated into a comprehensive literacy instruction program.

Read more Phonics.org reviews and explore more literacy learning apps today!

The Blending Board App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3/ 5

Usability: 3/ 5

Engagement: 3/ 5

Methods of Effective Decoding in Reading

phonicsorg on February 8, 2024

When children are learning to read, they must be taught how to “sound out” letters and blend them together to form words. If you’re a parent or teacher, for example, you’ll likely hear your child put together the word ‘dog’, saying /d/ /o/ /g/ … “dog!”

This process is called decoding.

Decoding is an important practice in reading development and one that is required for literacy. By definition, decoding is the translating of printed words into speech by sounding out each letter to form the word.

Some children pick up decoding quickly and easily, whereas others struggle to decipher new words. It can be a frustrating phase for a child but it doesn’t have to be.

To help your phonics students master this crucial skill in their literacy journey, here’s what you should know about effective decoding in reading.

Learning Effective Decoding Strategies

Decoding is an aspect of systematic phonics instruction. To understand these strategies, children should already have some phonemic awareness skills, including the ability to blend individual sounds into words.

1. Letter Sounds

While not an explicit decoding strategy in itself, learning the alphabet and letter sounds is the precursor to decoding. Children must be able to identify letters in print correctly and correlate the appropriate sounds to each letter. If a child struggles with early decoding methods, they may still need to develop their understanding of how letter sounds (phonemes) are represented by letters (graphemes).

2. Simple to Complex

Begin decoding instruction by teaching children to read simple words and then move to more complex words. For example, many reading programs begin with consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words like ‘cat’. Once the child can read these types of words with ease, they can start to practice decoding words with consonant blends like ‘sand’ or ‘blast’.

Introducing a complex word like ‘giraffe’ or ‘yacht’ when a child is just learning to decode can be frustrating! Building decoding skills in a step-by-step way helps children strengthen their competence and confidence when learning to read.

3. Blending

To make sense of new words, children combine letter sounds to form the full word. This is called blending. As an example, when a child sees the word ‘map’ for the first time, they must identify the letter and sounds in the word and then put them together to read the word ‘map.’

There are multiple methods of phoneme blending. The easiest way to blend is called continuous blending, or connected phonation. This strategy works well with continuous sounds like /m/ that can be held or elongated. Continuous blending is where the sounds are blended together without stopping in between. For example, reading the word ‘moss’ may sound like ‘mmmmmmmmoooooooooosssssssssss’. The sounds can be repeated and sped up to read words.

Blending is used in early reading but remains an important skill for life! It’s one of the most empowering skills in literacy development. Even through adulthood, readers use blending to decipher advanced, unfamiliar words and expand their vocabularies.

4. Chunking

Sometimes children come across familiar parts of a word with a new prefix or suffix. A child may know the word ‘want’ but come across the word ‘unwanted’ for the first time. They may recognize ‘want’ but then segment the sounds -un and -ed to then blend the whole word, ‘unwanted.’

As readers learn more advanced words that contain multiple syllables, this strategy—called chunking—can be used as a way to help decoding. Building a child’s understanding of affixes will support their ability to break a word into its smaller parts. It can be used to help them demonstrate spelling patterns, read longer words, and notice root words.

5. Syllable Splitting

Also called syllabication, syllable splitting helps children read longer words when decoding. The word ‘definition’ can be a complex word to decode for the first time, so breaking it down into syllables may make it easier to pronounce and understand: de-fi-ni-tion, pronounced /de/ /fi/ /ni/ /shun/.

Some children may need help with syllables in the decoding process. Using lines or symbols to split syllables can help a student visualize the correct pronunciation.

Strategies to Help Kids Practice Decoding

Like all aspects of phonics instruction, decoding should be taught explicitly and systematically while still being approachable and engaging for students.

To build the necessary decoding skills for a child, try to make it fun! Use games, activities, songs, and interactive stories to instill these important reading techniques.

As a teacher or parent, model correct decoding strategies for your child or students and don’t hesitate to guide them when they get stuck. For a hands-on learning experience that supplements classroom instruction, use an educational phonics app that includes fun decoding exercises or games.

Common Decoding Challenges and Mistakes

Every child learns to read at their own pace, so don’t worry if a student faces decoding challenges. It’s expected that they’ll make mistakes, especially during early reading. As reading skills grow, many children may struggle with irregular words, digraphs, or silent letters at first.

Reading is a sophisticated skill that takes time, explicit instruction, effective practice, and lots of encouragement. Acknowledge your child’s struggles and strengths. Let them know it’s okay to mess up and try again. Remind them that they’re still learning and celebrate their dedication to getting better.

If a student really struggles or falls behind in their decoding skills, you can seek insight from a phonics educator or reading specialist who uses proven instructional methods. There may be an underlying issue that needs to be addressed before the student can progress in their literacy development.

Resources to Teach Decoding Skills in Phonics Instruction

When kids learn decoding in a systematic way, they build foundational literacy skills. Mastering these skills at each new level of reading is an exciting, empowering experience that every child deserves.

Whether you’re helping your kindergartener practice decoding at home or teaching a class of third graders more advanced words, you need to know how to provide explicit instruction in decoding. There are helpful resources available that equip children to take the next necessary step toward becoming literate, lifelong students.

To learn more educational tips for decoding, reading, and writing, explore the resources at phonics.org!