Which activity best supports decoding development by teaching students to blend phonemes into words?

• A. Phoneme blending activities
• B. Sight word flashcards only
• C. Morpheme segmentation exercises
• D. Dictation with irregular words

Answer: (A)

Blending phonemes into words is the essential skill for decoding because it turns separate sounds into a spoken word that can then be mapped to the written form. When students practice blending, they move from hearing individual sounds to recognizing how those sounds string together to form a whole word, which is the heart of decoding. For example, blending the sounds /b/ /a/ /t/ produces “bat” and reinforces how letters correspond to each sound in a sequence. This direct practice builds the procedural ability to sound out unfamiliar words.

Other activities don’t target this exact process. Relying on sight-word flashcards emphasizes recognizing whole words without requiring students to blend sounds, so it doesn’t develop the decoding path. Morpheme segmentation focuses on breaking words into meaningful parts (like roots and affixes), which aids vocabulary and spelling but not the immediate skill of blending sounds to form a word. Dictation with irregular words emphasizes spelling and memory of irregular spellings rather than decoding through regular sound-letter relationships.