What is blending? Blending is the skill of combining individual speech sounds (phonemes) to form a word. Why is blending important? Blending is incredibly important because the ability to mentally combine speech sounds to create words helps students decode unfamiliar words using letter-sound patterns when reading. Difficulty with blending is a hallmark sign of a struggling reader. There are two types of blending: Chop blending and Smooth Blending. In this video, we will explore Chop Blending. In