Teaching · Reading Intervention

Sounds in.
Words out.

Pick a pattern, get a set of words with every sound segmented and checked, and run it with a continuous or sound-by-sound routine. Score as you go; accuracy builds session by session under a student code.

Open the builderWhat you get
$12one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $12

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Reading Intervention toolkit, $49 for 34 items.

The practice builder

Build a set, deliver it, and watch progress. Load the example data to see six made-up sessions for student K-14.

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What you get

Teaching · Reading Intervention$12

What you finish with
Blending sets you choose by pattern and sound count, a delivery screen with the routine, sound boxes for the student and one-tap scoring, and a progress record for each student code: first-try accuracy by session, words missed and error types, printable and exportable.
Who it is for
Reading interventionists, special education teachers, K to 2 classroom teachers, tutors and SLPs who teach phonemic awareness and early decoding in a structured literacy approach.
Format
Browser tool for a laptop or tablet the teacher holds or shares with the student. Printable set sheets and progress pages, a .csv of sessions, and an export file.
Access
$12 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Reading Intervention toolkit ($49) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Student codes and scores stay in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat. Use codes or initials, never names.
Where it lives
The Reading Intervention space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. On Build a set, choose patterns (CVC by vowel, digraphs, blends) and, if you like, the number of sounds. Make a set, swap any word, save it.
  2. On Deliver, enter a student code, pick the set and the routine: segmented or continuous.
  3. Say the sounds shown, pressing Next sound as you go so the student's boxes light. The student blends and says the word.
  4. Score each word: correct, correct after a model, or not yet. Missed words come back at the end.
  5. On Progress, read first-try accuracy by session against your goal, and print or export it.

Open the builder

The word bank and the routines

What is in the bank, how it was checked, and why the routines work the way they do.

The word bank

270 original selections of regular one-syllable words with short vowels. Every word is stored as its graphemes, one grapheme per sound, so ship is sh-i-p (three sounds) and duck is d-u-ck (three). When the page is built, each word is checked three ways: the graphemes must spell the word, the word must fit its pattern, and its sounds must match a pronunciation in the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary. All 270 words pass. Words whose spelling hides a sound were left out: x (/ks/, so fox has four sounds), qu, s said /z/, voiced th, r-controlled and long vowels.

PatternWordsFirst few
VC words14at, an, am, in, it, if
CVC, short a24cat, map, sat, man, bag, cap
CVC, short e19bed, get, hen, jet, leg, men
CVC, short i20big, bin, dig, fin, fit, hid
CVC, short o18cot, dog, dot, fog, hop, hot
CVC, short u21bug, bun, bus, cub, cup, cut
Digraph sh11ship, shop, shed, shut, fish, dish
Digraph ch10chip, chop, chin, chat, much, rich
Digraph th8thin, thud, moth, path, bath, math
Digraph wh4when, whip, which, whiz
Digraph ck12back, sock, duck, kick, neck, pick
Digraph ng10ring, sing, king, wing, long, song
Initial blends (CCVC)35stop, step, stem, slip, slam, sled
Final blends (CVCC)39fast, last, best, nest, rest, list
Blends at both ends (CCVCC)19stamp, blend, trust, crisp, plant, frost
Six-sound words6strand, sprint, splint, strict, script, scrimp

Sounds are written with a breve for short vowels (/ă/ as in at). Some programs teach -ng and -nk as a single welded unit; here -ng words count as three sounds (/r/ /ĭ/ /ng/), which matches how the phonemes are spoken. Short o is /ŏ/ as in hot; in some American dialects words like dog and song have a slightly different vowel, which does not change the number of sounds.

The routines

  • Continuous blending joins the sounds with no break, holding continuous sounds (vowels, /m/, /s/, /f/, /l/, /n/, /r/, /v/, /z/, /sh/, /th/) and saying stop sounds (/b/, /d/, /g/, /k/, /p/, /t/, /ch/, /j/) quickly, attached to the next sound. With no gaps there is less to hold in memory, which is why it is often taught first, beginning with words that start with a continuous sound.
  • Segmented, or sound-by-sound, blending says each sound separately with a short pause; the student holds them and blends. It asks more of memory and shows whether every sound was heard.
  • Error correction follows the usual structured literacy sequence: model, lead (say it together), test, then return to the word later. Only first tries count toward accuracy; returns are recorded separately.
  • No picture cues. Nothing on the page lets a student guess the word from an image or context. Blending practice is about the sounds.
  • The goal line (90% by default) is a common classroom criterion for moving on, not a research-set benchmark. The page reports when the last two sessions meet it; you decide what it means for the student.

Sources

  1. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Phonemic awareness instruction, including blending, and its effect on reading.
  2. Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., and Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250 to 287.
  3. Carnine, D. W., Silbert, J., Kame'enui, E. J., Slocum, T. A., and Travers, P. A. (2017). Direct Instruction Reading (6th ed.). Pearson. Continuous and stop sounds, continuous blending and the model-lead-test correction.
  4. Kilpatrick, D. A. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Wiley. Phonemic awareness as the basis for orthographic mapping.
  5. Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary (cmudict), version maintained by the CMU Sphinx project. Used only at build time to check every word's sounds; not reproduced.

Practice and classroom data, not a screening or diagnostic assessment: accuracy here is not a percentile or a standard score. Student codes, sets and scores are saved only in this browser; follow your school's rules for keeping student records. The example student and sessions are made up. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.