Blend Sounds Using Body-Coda Instead of Onset-Rime

Many people teach beginning readers word families.This is also called onset-rime. The onsets are the beginning consonant sounds, and the rimes are the ends of words. The theory is that children will be able to read words with the same spellings or rhyme at the end.

The problem some readers face with onset-rime blending is the distortion that occurs with stop sound consonants. Vowel sounds are all continuous sounds. This means that when you stretch or hold the sound it stays the same. Stop sounds do not stay the same. There is an extra vowel sound at the end.

Here's a video of me demonstrating continuous sounds and stop sounds.


If a child reads through to the vowel, there will not be a distorted extra sound in a word when reading or listening to someone else separate a word at the onset. Body-coda blending eliminates distortion in a word, because the pause always happens after a continuous vowel sound.
Here's a great article written by Bruce Murray author of The Reading Genie that describes the benefits of teaching a child to use body-coda when blending.

The colored letters are stop sounds.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Here's a video explaining how stop sounds can make reading difficult.

Blend Sounds Using Body-Coda Instead of Onset-Rime