A student writes 'led' for lend and 'jup' for jump. They need explicit instruction on which phonemic awareness skill?

A student writes 'led' for lend and 'jup' for jump. They need explicit instruction on which phonemic awareness skill?

• A. Phoneme blending
• B. Segmenting
• C. Identifying rhymes
• D. Phoneme isolation

Answer: (B)

Segmenting is the skill being targeted. When the student says “led” instead of “lend,” they’re effectively omitting the middle sound /n/ and not representing the word as separate phonemes. Segmenting involves breaking a word into its individual sounds in order, so for lend the four phonemes are /l/ /ɛ/ /n/ /d/. Practicing segmenting helps the student hear and identify each sound, which is the first step to correctly mapping sounds to letters and manipulating sounds (like deleting or adding a phoneme). For example, you can have the student say the word slowly and count or tap each phoneme, then practice changing one phoneme to see how the word changes. The other options focus on blending, recognizing rhymes, or isolating a single phoneme, which don’t address the specific difficulty shown by this error.

Segmenting is the skill being targeted. When the student says “led” instead of “lend,” they’re effectively omitting the middle sound /n/ and not representing the word as separate phonemes. Segmenting involves breaking a word into its individual sounds in order, so for lend the four phonemes are /l/ /ɛ/ /n/ /d/. Practicing segmenting helps the student hear and identify each sound, which is the first step to correctly mapping sounds to letters and manipulating sounds (like deleting or adding a phoneme). For example, you can have the student say the word slowly and count or tap each phoneme, then practice changing one phoneme to see how the word changes. The other options focus on blending, recognizing rhymes, or isolating a single phoneme, which don’t address the specific difficulty shown by this error.