‘L’ blends are consonant blends where the second letter is ‘l.’ There are six different ‘l’ blends: bl, cl, fl, pl, gl and sl. There are many examples of typical ‘l’ blend words, including ‘blue,’ ‘clay,’ ‘plan’ and ‘slide.’ Children will learn about the ‘l’ blend during phonics.
What is a consonant blend?
Before we begin looking at the ‘l’ consonant blends, we need to know what a consonant blend is and how we can recognize one.
A consonant blend, or a consonant cluster as they’re sometimes called, is when two or more consonants are blended with no intervening vowels. What makes consonant blends different is that all the individual consonants retain their sound when the blend is heard. So, for instance, when we say ‘string,’ we can listen to all of the letters in the ‘str’ blend.
There are many different blends in the English language, and children will encounter many of them during their early phonics education.
What are the 6 ‘l’ consonant blends?
The ‘l’ consonant blends, or ‘l’ blends, are consonant blends with ‘l’ as their second letter. Many common words contain this ‘l’ blend, including ‘black,’ ‘flat,’ ‘plan,’ and ‘glass.’
There are six different ‘l’ consonant blends: ‘ bl,’ ‘cl,’ ‘fl,’ ‘pl,’ ‘gl,’ and ‘sl.’
Here are some examples of these ‘l’ blends in different words:
‘bl’ – blue
‘cl’ – ‘clam’
‘fl’ – ‘flat’
‘pl’ – ‘play’
‘gl’ – glue
‘sl’ – slide’
What is the difference between a blend and a digraph?
Now, before we look at some ‘l’ blend words, it’s time to address the elephant in the room: digraphs. While these two pieces of terminology might be pretty confusing at first, there are critical differences between the two:
- As we’ve discovered, a blend is where consonants are blended, but each keeps its sound.
- On the other hand, a digraph is where the different letters all represent a single phoneme or sound.
Let’s look at a couple of examples to explain what we mean by this. When we pronounce the word ‘clay,’ we can see that the ‘cl’ is an ‘l’ consonant blend since both the ‘c’ and the ‘l’ can be heard. When we say the word ‘shop,’ we can tell that the ‘sh’ is a digraph representing just one sound.
What words have ‘l’ consonant blends?
Now that we’re not in the dark about blends, ‘l’ consonant blends, and digraphs, it’s time to explore some ‘l’ blend words. We’ve compiled a handy list below that has 20 example words for each ‘l’ blend. Many of these words are high-frequency ones that kids might come across often:
| /bl/ |
|
|
| /cl/ |
|
|
| /fl/ |
|
|
| /pl/ |
|
|
| /gl/ |
|
|
| /sl/ |
|
|
