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Blending is putting together separate sounds to hear the whole word. When you hear the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ and blend them, you hear and say the word cat. This skill is essential because it helps students connect sounds to the letters that represent them and figure out unfamiliar words by sounding them out.

This differs from other phonemic tasks: altering a single sound in a word means changing one sound to make a new word, rather than building a word from sounds. Identifying the first sound in a word is about locating the initial sound, not combining sounds. Breaking a word into its syllables involves dividing by syllables rather than blending individual phonemes to form a word.