Free Blending Strips – Science of Reading Aligned Green, Yellow, Red Sound Mapping for Decoding and Encoding

This Guided Phonics + Beyond Blending Strips Freebie brings the Science of Reading to life with a hands-on green, yellow, red sound mapping system for blending and spelling instruction. The color-coded layout helps students visually and physically connect phonemes (sounds) to graphemes (letters) as they learn to decode and encode words.

The system works as follows:

• Green box = beginning sound

• Yellow box = middle sound (vowel)

• Red box = ending sound or digraph

How to Use for Blending (Decoding):

The teacher says the word (for example, “fish”). Students tap each box as they blend:

• Green box → /f/

• Yellow box → /i/

• Red box → /sh/

Students then blend the sounds together to read fish. This multisensory process helps them link sounds to letters, strengthen phonemic awareness, and promote automatic decoding.

How to Use for Encoding (Spelling):

Students can also write directly on the blending strips to spell words sound by sound.
For example:

• Say “dog.”

• Students write d in the green box, o in the yellow box, and g in the red box.

This interactive format reinforces phoneme-grapheme mapping and helps students connect spelling to sound.

Ideas for Use:

• Use in small-group phonics lessons for daily blending and spelling routines.

• Add to literacy centers for hands-on word building.

• Laminate for reusable practice with dry-erase markers.

• Pair with magnetic letters, letter tiles, or handwriting tools for multisensory engagement.

What’s Included:

• Guided Phonics + Beyond blending strips (green, yellow, red format)

• Visual color cues to support sound-to-letter mapping

• Designed for CVC, CCVC, CVCC, and digraph words

• Aligned with the Science of Reading and Guided Phonics + Beyond framework