Tricky Consonant Blends

Those tricky consonant blends – dr, tr, ft.

Sometimes children have great difficulty hearing the individual sounds within consonant blends such as “dr”, “tr”, and “ft”.

To help them with this, say the sounds as long and drawn out as possible and as close together as possible. You can hear how this is done in the three videos when the “blue ear” is clicked.

The example for “dr” in drop comes from Level 4 in Gilead Success with Phonics, just after Phonic Comic 1/31 (egg, drop, yell, yuck).

I have replaced the video for “ft” in Level 3_4, and “tr” in Level 3_5, to show this better. It is going to involve a considerable amount of work to change this throughout Gilead Success with Phonics, but I think it will make it much more helpful for children.

Now, both in the whole words and when a child clicks on “dr”, they will see and hear “d” and then “r”. The blue ear will still show children the individual sounds drawn out and then how they go together. (Previously, they had just seen “dr” in red and heard /dr/ in the word, and only the blue ear had shown the individual sounds within “dr”.)

I hope you enjoy my circus family.