What type of task involves students identifying the first sound of a word?

The task of having students identify the first sound of a word is appropriately categorized as a segmenting task. Segmenting refers to the process of breaking down words into their individual sounds or phonemes. When students are asked to identify the first sound of a word, they are engaging in this breaking apart of the word to focus on its initial phoneme.

For example, if a student is asked what sound begins the word "cat," they would isolate the /k/ sound as the first phoneme. This ability to segment sounds is essential for developing phonemic awareness, which is a critical skill for reading and writing.

In contrast, blending tasks require students to put together individual sounds to form a word, oddity tasks involve identifying which word in a set does not belong based on its sound or phonetic structure, and rhyming tasks focus on the recognition of similar ending sounds in different words. Each of these tasks emphasizes different phonological skills, but identifying the first sound specifically aligns with segmenting.