What does a student demonstrate if they can blend and segment sounds?

When a student demonstrates the ability to blend and segment sounds, they are showcasing phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is a crucial component of early literacy development, as it involves the recognition and manipulation of the individual sounds, or phonemes, that make up words.

Blending refers to the ability to hear individual sounds in a word and combine them to form that word. For example, if a student hears the sounds /c/, /a/, and /t/, they can blend these sounds together to say "cat." Segmenting, on the other hand, involves breaking a word down into its constituent sounds. For instance, from the word "dog," a student would identify the sounds /d/, /o/, /g/.

This skill is an essential foundation for reading because it helps students understand the structure of words and prepares them for more advanced reading and spelling tasks. Phonemic awareness is distinct from reading fluency, comprehension skills, and vocabulary proficiency, which involve different aspects of reading development. Fluency focuses on the ability to read with speed and accuracy, comprehension involves understanding and interpreting text, and vocabulary proficiency centers on the knowledge of word meanings.