What should a teacher focus on for students who are effectively blending onset and rime?

Focusing on implementing more complex phonemic tasks is the most appropriate choice for students who are already effectively blending onset and rime. When students have mastered blending onsets and rimes, it indicates a solid understanding of phonemic awareness, which allows them to progress to more advanced phonemic tasks. These tasks can include activities that require manipulating phonemes, such as substituting, deleting, or rearranging sounds within words. This further enriches their phonological skills and prepares them for more sophisticated reading and writing tasks.

Enhancing students' phonemic awareness through these complex tasks not only builds upon their existing skills but also paves the way for improved decoding and spelling abilities. Engaging in more complex tasks challenges them and encourages deeper cognitive processing related to sounds and letters, which is critical for literacy development.

While practicing segmenting phonemes, focusing on vocabulary development, or following routines to enhance fluency are all important parts of reading instruction, they do not directly build upon the successful blending of onset and rime as effectively as introducing more complex phonemic tasks.