R blends

The largest blend family. Dr and tr are the two children most often hear as a single sound, because they genuinely shift in speech.

Consonant blends

br cr dr fr gr pr tr BLEND_R_01

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

• /br/ /kr/ /dr/ /fr/ /gr/ /pr/ /tr/ consonant + r: brown, crab, drum

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 4: Consonant Blends

Child explanation

Br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr and tr are two sounds said quickly. Listen for both.

The rule

In an r blend both letters keep their usual sound, said in quick succession.

What is really going on

The /dr/ and /tr/ clusters are phonetically affricated in ordinary speech — drum begins with something close to /dʒr/ and tree with something close to /tʃr/ — which is why children often write jrum and chree. Those spellings are evidence of accurate listening, not of careless work.

Position in the word

• Beginning of a word — The usual position. For example: brown, crab, drum, frog, grass, print, tree.

Examples

Easy examples

brown, crab, drum, frog, grass

More examples

bring, bread, cry, cross, drop, dress, free, from, fresh, green, grow, press, pretty, trip, truck, train

Pseudo-words

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

brip, crat, drun, frem, grod, prel, trub

Contrast pairs

• cab versus crab — One sound added.
• gas versus grass
• tip versus trip

Common reading mistakes

• drum: a child reads written as jrum, where the word is /drʌm/. Accurate hearing of the affricated cluster, mis-mapped to a spelling.
• tree: a child reads written as chree, where the word is /triː/. The same, for tr.

Teacher note

When a child writes jrum or chree, tell them their ears are right and the spelling is the odd part. That is true, it preserves their confidence in listening, and it is far more useful than marking it wrong.

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

• L blends — bl cl fl gl pl sl — Two consonants, two sounds, said quickly. Nothing new to learn — the letters keep the values the child already knows.
• 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.
• CH and its three sounds — ch — /tʃ/ in chip, /k/ in school, /ʃ/ in chef. Each group has a cause — and the cause is where the word came from.

• Previous in Consonant blends: L blends — bl cl fl gl pl sl — Two consonants, two sounds, said quickly. Nothing new to learn — the letters keep the values the child already knows.
• Next in Consonant blends: 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.
• All reading rules

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