L blends

Two consonants, two sounds, said quickly. Nothing new to learn — the letters keep the values the child already knows.

Consonant blends

bl cl fl gl pl sl BLEND_L_01

Strong rule · High reliability · Very common · Beginner · Reading and spelling

• /bl/ /kl/ /fl/ /gl/ /pl/ /sl/ consonant + l: blue, clap, flag

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 4: Consonant Blends

Child explanation

Bl, cl, fl, gl, pl and sl are two sounds said quickly one after the other. You already know both of them.

The rule

In an l blend both letters keep their usual sound. The reader says them in quick succession rather than learning a new sound.

What is really going on

A consonant cluster, not a digraph. English permits /bl/, /kl/, /fl/, /gl/, /pl/ and /sl/ word-initially; /vl/, /tl/ and /dl/ do not occur. Difficulty is articulatory rather than orthographic, which is why practice should be oral before it is visual.

Position in the word

• Beginning of a word — The usual position for l blends. For example: blue, clap, flag, glad, plan, slip.

Examples

Easy examples

blue, clap, flag, glad, plan

More examples

black, block, clip, class, clock, flat, flip, floor, glass, globe, plus, play, slide, slow, sleep

Pseudo-words

Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.

blim, clup, flad, glon, plib, slem

Contrast pairs

• back versus black — One sound added to the front.
• cap versus clap
• sip versus slip

Common reading mistakes

• flag: a child reads /fəlæg/, where the word is /flæg/. A vowel inserted between the two consonants.
• clap: a child reads /kæp/, where the word is /klæp/. One consonant of the blend dropped.

Do not teach it like this

"Bl says /bl/." — treating the blend as a new grapheme with its own card.

It implies the child has something new to learn, when in fact they already know both sounds. The work is in the blending, and framing it as a new fact hides that.

"You know /b/ and you know /l/. Say them close together." Then practise orally, then on paper.

Teacher note

Work the blend orally before showing it written. Say /b/…/l/…/ æ/…/k/ slowly and speed it up. The commonest error is inserting a vowel — /bəlæk/ — and it is cured by speed, not by explanation. Contrast pairs like cap/clap make the added sound audible.

Learn these first

• The consonants that keep one sound — b d f h j k l m n p r t v w z — Fifteen consonants represent the same sound almost everywhere they appear. They are the reliable floor the rest of the system is built on.
• The five short vowels — a e i o u in a closed syllable — A single vowel with a consonant after it and nothing else is usually short. This is the rule that makes CVC words decodable.

Related rules

• R blends — br cr dr fr gr pr tr — The largest blend family. Dr and tr are the two children most often hear as a single sound, because they genuinely shift in speech.
• S blends — sc sk sm sn sp st sw — S plus a consonant. The easiest blends to hear, because /s/ can be held and stretched for as long as a child needs.
• Three-letter blends — scr spl spr str squ shr thr — Three consonants in a row. Every one begins with s, sh or th, and the rest is a blend the child already knows.
• Final blends — -st -nd -mp -nt -ft -lt -sk -lp — Blends at the end of a word. Harder to hear than initial blends, because the final consonant is quieter in ordinary speech.

• Next in Consonant blends: R blends — br cr dr fr gr pr tr — The largest blend family. Dr and tr are the two children most often hear as a single sound, because they genuinely shift in speech.
• All reading rules

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