Three-letter blends

Three consonants in a row. Every one begins with s, sh or th, and the rest is a blend the child already knows.

Consonant blends

scr spl spr str squ shr thr BLEND_THREE_01

Strong rule · High reliability · Common · Early · Reading and spelling

• /skr/ /spl/ /spr/ /str/ /ʃr/ /θr/ three consonants: scream, splash, street

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 4: Consonant Blends

Child explanation

Str is just /s/ plus tr, which you already know. Scream is /s/ plus cream.

The rule

A three-letter blend is an s, sh or th followed by a two-letter blend already known. Nothing in it is new.

What is really going on

English initial clusters of three consonants always begin with /s/. Shr and thr are a digraph plus /r/ rather than three consonants, which is worth distinguishing: the sh and th are single sounds.

Position in the word

• Beginning of a word — The only position for three-consonant clusters in English. For example: scream, splash, spring, street.

Examples

Easy examples

street, spring, splash, scream, three

More examples

strong, string, strap, stretch, sprint, spray, split, scratch, scrap, shrink, shrub, throw, throw, thrill

Pseudo-words

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

strob, splan, scrup, shref, thrad

Contrast pairs

• tree versus street — The blend a child knows, with s in front.
• ring versus spring
• cream versus scream

Teacher note

Build them from what is already known rather than presenting them as new: cover the s and read the rest, then uncover it. That takes a threatening-looking cluster and turns it into one extra sound, which is what it is.

Learn these first

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Related rules

• 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.
• SH — sh — The most reliable digraph in English. One sound, one spelling, no exceptions a child will meet.
• TH, unvoiced — th — The th of thin, bath and think — made with breath, no voice. Spelled identically to its voiced twin.
• QU — qu — Q never travels alone in English. Qu is one unit representing /kw/ — two sounds from two letters that must be read together.

• Previous 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.
• Next in Consonant blends: 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.
• All reading rules

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