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Synthetic Phonics Discussion Forum

Synthetic Phonics

  Synthetic Phonics for teachers and parents


Synthetic Phonics
Subject: synthetic phonics


Author:
Liana
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:16:21 11/01/09 Sun
I have just found this document whilst surfing the internet. Think it's very informative and well divided.

http://www.auspeld.org.au/Synthetic%20Phonics%20.pdf

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Subject: Using phonics programmes from another country


Author:
Rochelle
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:45:53 10/13/09 Tue
A synthetic phonics programme should teach on the words that the children are familiar with.
Letters and Sounds avoids those words that would be considered unfamiliar or archaic however it is a British programme so some words may not be universally familiar and maybe should be avoided if teaching in a country that they are not used. For example the word ‘gnat’ is taught in Phase 5. As a New Zealander this word is not familiar to me however if I was raised in England it would be.

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Subject: Hearing a child read


Author:
Rochelle
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:13:30 10/13/09 Tue
In my experience a child learns to read most successfully when they enjoy what they are doing and when they feel a sense of achievement and success in the task. To a certain extent I agree with the 'Parents golden rule'. It is important that the children enjoy reading however I have noticed that each children process's information at a different rate then others and some children simply require a little more 'thinking' time. By telling a child the word as soon as they pause, is this allowing them any thinking time in which to process the information?

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Subject: The Concept of a Letter Sound


Author:
Keeta Regunath
[Edit]
Date Posted: 01:57:51 10/04/09 Sun
Splitting words into their sounds is not an easy task for my children. They do not understand they need to sound out the letter when reading new words. Instead of sounding out each phoneme by its sound, they say the letter name while breaking the word apart. They are unsure of the sounds that come with the letters and this makes it difficult for them to read and write.
Another area of difficulty I noticed is, most of my children do not hear the sounds when a word is spoken out loud. They are not able to stretch the word and count the phonemes on their fingers. For example, if I say ‘speech’, most children do not know how to break and stretch the word apart i.e. I hear 4 sounds (s-p-ee-ch).

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Subject: A Kinesthetic Memory of the Letter Sound


Author:
Keeta Regunath
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:09:25 10/04/09 Sun
I use a method called ‘sound fingers’ to help children remember the letter sounds. For example, I say “Show me three fingers” and then I say the word ‘mop’. Children then touch or trace the grapheme onto each finger as they segment the sound: m-o-p.

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Subject: How long on each one?


Author:
Karen
[Edit]
Date Posted: 16:51:17 09/09/09 Wed
We have a synthetics phonics programme in place, but we feel we might be whizzing through it too quickly? What guide can anyone give for the amount of time on each phoneme/group of?
Thanks:)

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Subject: Tactile approach to handwriting and letter formation


Author:
Vanila
[Edit]
Date Posted: 22:56:01 08/30/09 Sun
An activity that I find useful for learners that prefer the tactile approach is getting the children to use sponge and water to write down letters on the wall or ground. The children love this activity as it is a fun outdoor activity. Besides this, I have also tried giving the children, big (A4) laminated sheets of alphabets and some beads or beans which they can manipulate or arrange to make the given letter.

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Subject: Activity Focued on Beginning Sounds / Techniques to encourage feelings of success.


Author:
Vanila
[Edit]
Date Posted: 22:49:37 08/30/09 Sun
This activity focuses on identifying the beginning sounds of a word. I would choose a worksheet based activity, where there will be nine pictures inside individual boxes. Under each picture the word for the picture will be typed out with the missing beginning sound. For example, I will have a picture of a dog in a box, and underneath the picture, it will appear as such; ­__og. So the child will have to look at the picture and sound out the word, to identify the beginning sound which then has to be written down by that child. This activity can be done in the form of a positive worksheet, where the child is given a chance to amend the mistakes which would ultimately encourage feelings of success. This could also be followed by rewards such as public praise or stickers.

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Subject: accommodate


Author:
rasha (help)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 16:36:33 08/27/09 Thu
Accomodation the way of giving the information in many different ways according to the situation of the student help the teacher in teaching students.Also grouping words that have acommon spelling pattern and similar pronunciation can help the student in differentiating these words in meaning and pronunciation.

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Subject: helping students to remember the shape of letters


Author:
rasha (help)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 16:27:47 08/27/09 Thu
I find a way to help students remember the shape of the lettes by making the student mimics the shape of the letter.For example, the letter (r).The student will stand up straight extending his arm in front of himself.All letters the student can mimic its shape.

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Subject: 'Vowel Twins'


Author:
Julie
[Edit]
Date Posted: 22:19:33 08/25/09 Tue
‘Vowel Twins’

C, is a six year old child, with ADD inattentive. As his attention span is limited, I make the sessions that I have with him ‘big’. By that I mean, that I let him do things that they don’t do so much in class, as he likes to be the centre of attention and in charge all the time. I write on the whiteboard some words with ‘ee’ in them. See example list below:

See, weed, seed, bee, deep, week, sleep, sheep, feet.

I then give C the marker pen & he has to underline the ‘ee’ sound. He then has to sound each word out and ‘squish’ them together to make a word. He then gets to give a big tick next to the ones that he knows. After he has done, he then has to copy down the words he didn’t get into his ‘jail’ book (this is a book of words that he has to learn and get correct three times before he can get them out of jail). I tell him what they are and let him draw a picture on the whiteboard next to the word. Whilst making the lesson with him ‘big’, I also explain to him that his time to do this is with me only, and when he is in class, he has to take turns with the other children.

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Subject: Multi Sensory Approach to Phonics


Author:
Julie
[Edit]
Date Posted: 10:32:06 08/23/09 Sun
‘Alphabet race’

I play this with my year one and two children in the achievement centre. Print out an alphabet strips and mount on coloured card. I put mine in the shape of mountain trail, and on the card I have painted a mountain. Have a coloured counter for each player and a dice. Put the counters at the beginning of the board (that is, just before the "a") and choose a child to roll first and move their counter the appropriate number of spaces. Depending on the age of the child, you can adapt the game in many ways:
• when you land on a letter, you say the sound that the letter makes or move back 5 (their age) number of spaces
• when you land on a letter, you say the name of that letter or move back
• say a word which begins or ends with the letter you have landed on, or move back

The winner is the first to reach ‘z’ (top of the mountain). This game is also very adaptable for different ages, as you can assign each child a task appropriate to their age and skill. I found that this game makes it fun to learn, makes them learn from their peers, and also, makes them learn to share and be patient.

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Subject: Clap it out!


Author:
Tan Sue-Ann
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:31:01 08/18/09 Tue
Hi All,

My tutor has asked me to share my experience –so here goes! :)

~Breaking Up Longer Words~

Reading longer words can be a daunting experience for many children and I was very keen to try the suggested technique in the coursebook with my phonics booster group. The children were initially rather confused of the term syllables, but when I explained that syllables were merely the beats in a word (e.g. ‘apple’ has two beats – a | pple), the children seemed more comfortable with the concept. I reinforced this by clapping out the beats in a word and asked the children to join in (e.g. two claps for “a | pple”). I then invited the children to break up some words by clapping out the beats in that word, i.e. garden, market, hundred, button, and puppet.

The children really enjoyed it. Hope yours would too!

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Subject: Learning to read, then and now.


Author:
Gabrielle Dowling
[Edit]
Date Posted: 04:00:11 08/16/09 Sun
I started school at Easter 1965 at the age of 4 and a half. We did not have KG classes or nursery schools in those days and whilst I'm sure my parents and grandparents read stories to me, school would have been my introduction to education of any kind. We were taught to read using mainly the sight method. We had Janet and John books using repeated words such as 'This is Janet. This is John.' 'Run, Janet, run. Run, John, run.' The stories were not particularly exciting but they were about children the same age as us. The children came from a 'normal' family with 2 children, a mum, a dad and a dog. The books followed the children's life, from eating breakfast, playing, going to school, to going to bed. Along with the sight words, we were taught using what was possibly the first phonics programme: ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet). There were over 40 'signs' that represented letter sounds. For example 'oo' as in moon was like a rounded 'w' with a loop in the middle, while 'oo' as in wood did not have the loop. A for angel was an a and e together 'æ'. The main difference between ITA and today's phonic programmes is that we had to relearn how to spell at the age of about 7. The inventor of ITA, Sir James Pitman, believed that as children became fluent in the programme, they would become aware of conventional spelling and move seamlessly into the normal alphabet. This did not always happen! A child learning to read using Jolly Phonics or Letterland, for example, is taught correct spelling right from the beginning.
From what I can remember, we did not have worksheets (remember that we did not have photocopiers so any worksheets had to be typed and drawn onto a skin and manually printed on a drum printer – very time consuming and expensive), we were taught by copying from posters or from the blackboard into our exercise books. My grandfather, who was a primary school teacher, made flashcards to help me but these were the only other props that I had. Rather boring and confusing. ITA has left with me poor spelling, even after 44 years, and being an English teacher.
It is not just the teaching of reading that has changed over the years – the whole attitude to learning is different. Small children are taught in brightly coloured classrooms and learning through play has been proven to work, rather than teaching children 'parrot-fashion'. Teaching a child phonic sounds and giving them the knowledge to make and read words very early on gives a child confidence and keeps their interest. Teaching them songs to help remember the sounds, having pictures to colour and draw using those sounds, and giving them worksheets to complete that they cannot get wrong (to start with) can only be encouraging and helpful. Once a child can read even just a few words, there are many reading schemes to follow. My favourite is the Oxford Reading Tree. The stories are wonderful, the children can relate to the characters and the children love to read them. They start at a very easy level and progress at the child's own speed. The books are colourful and have wonderful illustrations. There are worksheets that help with the phonics work, progressing to comprehension. Everything works together.

This seems to be the way that most of the better known and proven phonics programmes work and work well. They teach quickly enabling a child to be able to read quickly, and write, keeping the child interested and his/her confidence high. I wish they had been around when I learnt to read.

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Subject: 'Hearing a child read'


Author:
Julie
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:21:34 08/12/09 Wed
C is a 5 year old, who has just completed FS2, and is having difficulties in reading.change C’s reading book twice a week. I always start a lesson by asking her what she has done the previous day, or by what she is looking forward to doing at the weekend. I try to match her reading books accordingly. This week Ca was going on holiday, so I got her a reading book called ‘The Journey”, as it was about going on holiday. We read the book together & told her all the words she did not get instantly. I then started the book again & the words that she did not recognize, I gave her the first sound and the letter. Some she got right from the illustration, others she remembered because they were interesting to her (ie sandwich) and some she worked out for herself phonetically. Each time she got the word right, I wrote it down in her ‘jail book’. The ‘jail book’ is a way of ensuring that it stays ‘locked’ in her memory, she has to get it right 3 times before we can release it from ‘jail’. She has great delight in showing me a key motion next to her head & saying to me ‘its locked Miss Julie & can’t escape’ after three correct times.

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Subject: 'Phonemic awareness'


Author:
Julie
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:18:40 08/12/09 Wed
C is a 5 year old, who has just completed FS2, and is having difficulties in reading. She can recognize all the phonic sounds, but has trouble blending them to make words, and gets frustrated & embarrassed in class.
I take C one hour a day, so that I can accelerate her reading & writing skills. I asked C to count how many words there were in the sentence that I had read from her reading book. She eagerly counted correctly, and was very pleased with herself that she got the number correct. I used this as a way of telling her how good she is, thus pointing out a positive. She then went on to sound out the letters and ‘squish’ them together to make words, her confidence growing with each new word. I find that the best approach with her is to start on a positive note (ie show her what she does well), then also end on a positive, by recapping how many words she made phonetically, especially if it is more than her age, which I then make a big deal out of to boost her confidence.

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Subject: To avoid confusion between the letter 'b' and 'd'/ multisensory methods


Author:
Lily youakim
[Edit]
Date Posted: 03:12:51 02/10/09 Tue
To avoid confusion between the letter 'b' and 'd' I use this technique:
• When writing the letter 'd': every time I or the child write this letter, I have to remind them that the letter name 'c' comes before the letter name 'd'. So once I start to form the first part, which looks like the letter 'c', I say, " 'C' comes before 'd'…", I continue the formation of the letter by saying, " …up and down." Then I say the letter sound and repeat it by writing in the air. Children would practice skywriting and then write it on their boards. The alphabet should be displayed, as I point to the letter through demonstration. A child would have a visual memory from seeing the letter, an auditory memory from writing the letter in the air or on their boards.
• For the letter 'b': I use the sand tray and a toy car. I tell the children that I will show them the way to get to the park lot, which shows the direction of the letter formation.
First, I move the car starting from the top. Then I come down to the end of the road. "It is closed!" I say. After that, I go back to the middle of the road and turn left to take the big turning around the lake to park my car.
They have fun taking turns trying to get to the parking lot. I display a card of the letter 'b', designed with street lines and arrows that show the direction to the parking lot, on the wall to strengthen their visual memory. They use auditory memory when hearing the sound said out loud, tactile from writing in the air and a kinetic memory from moving the car in the sand.

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Subject: Parent Education and Involvement


Author:
Rochelle Thomson
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:06:20 05/05/09 Tue
Hi All,
Following my Module 4 assignment, my tutor suggested I share my comment regarding an additional criteria for an ideal phonics course: I would suggest each course should offer an understandable “user guide” for parents and other non-teachers who read and write with children...
I am aware some courses do offer easliy understood guidance which parents can refer to but others, while being very good. eg: letters and Sounds are written for professionals and would be quite difficult for an untrained person to understand.
I can tell from the forum the that great majority of people doing this course are teachers, or work with kids in or out of school.Although I have a TEFLA background, I've been doing this course simply as a mum who wants to know how to help her son (no special needs or dyslexia)with reading and writing.
Do teachers want parents to understand phonics? Are most parents interested? I would like to know about other peoples' experiences.

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Subject: Blending sounds and learning disability


Author:
Vikki Chester-Walsh
[Edit]
Date Posted: 13:36:06 07/13/09 Mon
I am a parent of two children. One of whom is 12 years old and has a learning difficulty, and one 4 years old and just learning to read. They both are learning to read and spell using synthetic phonics. They both followed the same process until it came to blending sounds. My 12 year old was completely unable to grasp the concept despite continued use of the multi-sensory method (auditory, tactile and visual). We were then playing a game of 'splitting sounds' in words, e.g. do you know a bl-ack d-o-g? My son then began to split sounds into the 'blends'we had been practising. The moral of the story is to try lots of different ways of getting the information across and don't assume that the information you have given has not been 'learned'. For children with learning difficulties it may be a difficulty in expressing the sounds rather than in encoding (taking it in) it.

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Subject: Creating an atmosphere of Success


Author:
Liana Cortis
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:53:26 07/07/09 Tue
Techniques for Success

The school I work in values a lot the children's self-confidence and self-esteem. Hence we use a lot of reinforcing strategies in order to be able to reach out to all children in class. Despite of their abilities, every student's progress is valued on an individual level. Children accept the diversity in class and do not find it hard to understand that some children who have low academic capabilities do a bigger effort to improve.
I can easily recall students giving a loud applause to children with special needs when they were awarded a reward. Such warmth from their peers helped them become more sociable and confident in their own capabilities. This also helped them to increase their self-esteem and self-worth.
Throughout the year, as a team (teacher and LSA) we worked together so as to include everyone in class. Hence a lot of reinforcing strategies were used. These included:

- Certificates

Certificates were awarded during the week to those children who showed improvement. This was not based on the premise that those who do best will get the certificate, but it gave the children equal opportunities. Children who averaged in the low academic capabilities and who did well in reading, composition etc where given a certificate. Hence, certificates were used to praise students for:
Good behaviour.
Paying attention for a larger span of time during lessons / activities.
Reading Improvement.
Better social skills.
Doing an effort to improve.
Studying hard.
Being creative during art lessons.
Being sportive.
Being good at singing.
More participation in class.
Being kind and considerate to others.
Helping other children.
Being open to share with others.

Apart from giving out daily reinforcers in class, all the children in the school receive a medal during the sports day, and hence no distinction is made between the student who came first and last. Furthermore, a yearly certificate is given to students in the school Prize Day in one of these categories:
Diligence
Handwriting
Loyalty
Kindness
Effort
Generosity
Artistic Talent
Sports

In this way all the students are given a prize for their success. This makes it all worthwhile and the students' self-confidence is further enhanced through acknowledgement of such skills in front of the whole school.

- Praise

Children are constantly praised verbally for doing their best or for focusing well on the task they are performing. In this way the children also feel a sense of achievement. Apart from increasing their self- confidence, it is also a way of making others participative of the success of the children. Children also become more motivated to work hard in order to be praised themselves.

- Stickers

Children are also given stickers and stamps for writing neatly, working diligently and for doing their best to improve. Children look forward to seeing such stickers and stamps on their copybook and hence they so they always feel appreciated when their efforts are recognized and acknowledged.They are even motivated to learn more.

- Behaviour Chart

A behaviour chart is used for the whole class. Students get stars everyday whenever they behave well, however, such stars are immediately removed whenever they misbehave or do something which can harm someone else (such as fight during the break). Furthermore children are also given stars for quickly following teacher's prompts. Students with special needs are given their own time and still rewarded.


Children have learnt that the criteria for such rewards vary from child to child. This is due to the fact that we are all different and we have to appreciate such diversity since it enriches us. Children learn that what might be easy for them is not the same for one of their peers who might be struggling to perform it.

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Subject: Team Bingo


Author:
Tan Sue-Ann
[Edit]
Date Posted: 07:46:24 06/22/09 Mon
~Avoiding feelings of competitiveness~

When reading the coursebook, I found myself nodding when it highlighted the importance of carrying out activities that cultivate uncompetitiveness. I truly support this and always encourage children to celebrate their team effort because I constantly experience the positive effect it has when advancing children’s learning.

For example, during a recent game of Bingo, it gave me sheer satisfaction to see the children having such an enjoyable time during this simple, renowned yet effective activity. The children were ecstatic during this game and were all eager to get their cards full. They were not competitive with each other and even helped each other by telling me who had got ‘Bingo’! It didn’t bother them who would be the first because I had told the children that we needed to make sure that we won as a team, and that everyone would get a chance to shout ‘Bingo’.

Feelings of success need not be individual; it can be felt as a team too! ;) Go…team!!

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Subject: Helping EAL children to pronounce sounds


Author:
david hamblin
[Edit]
Date Posted: 22:34:13 03/31/09 Tue
I currently teach an EAL class in an international school. Most of the children in my class are from Japan and Korea. I teach phonics daily and constantly encounter the same problem. These children really struggle to correctly pronounce certain letter sounds. For example the r sound is very difficult for them to pronounce. They also really struggle with short and long vowel sounds for example they find it hard to diffferentiate a, e and u. The reason for this is that their own language does not use these sounds and they therefore have to train their mouth to produce these sounds. Can anyone help me to help them? I am not a speach therapist and am used to teaching children who are already able to make the sound being taught. Thanks

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Subject: Drawing Sentences


Author:
Priya
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:43:42 04/28/09 Tue
I am sharing my experience of trying out the "Drawing Sentences" activity (from Module 4 of the Synthetic Phonics practical route).

First, the children read out the sentences. Then, we discussed the meaning of any unfamiliar words and I explained what the task was to ensure that they had a clear idea of what they were to do. Finally, they set out to draw pictures for each sentence.

The children found this activity really engaging because they all love drawing and this inspired them to read the sentences. In addition to that, it made them think of appropriate pictures to illustrate the meaning of the sentence.

Before wrapping up the lesson, we all read the sentences together and I was amazed at how incredibly specific their drawings were. It showed me that they truly understood the sentences that they had read.

I am so pleased that the activities from this course have been so carefully thought out that every time I pick one to experiment, it guarantees success for the children and me as a teacher.

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Subject: puppetophonic !!!!


Author:
Nehal Chudasama
[Edit]
Date Posted: 03:21:57 04/14/09 Tue
Hi all,
I wish to share this amusing idea of using puppets to teach phonics,the children surely learn with ease and interest if you are able to use it the right way !!
There many ways of making up your own act depending on what you have to teach.I have this big hand puppet named 'Woofy' the dog who helps my pupils to learn the letter sounds,I sit him on my lap and introduce the session with a little story.I normally use the same puppet for all phonic sessions, so that the children are able to relate to the sounds and link the sessions.I write the letters with a dry wipe marker on the dog bone and show it to the children,we sound it out together.Then ask the puppet to read (you can give your voice like a ventroloquist or ask help from another adult in the class) if the puppet is able to read ,he gets the bone.(the puppet can also make a mistake which you or the children can improve but make sure that the children don't make fun, if he not able to do it correctly )The children get engaged with such an activity and are completely switched on.
Or alternatively,you can put a word or a letter card around the puppet's neck and help the children to sound it out or match the sounds on two cards.The ones who are able to do it well,get a chance to come out kiss the puppet or any other reward to do with the puppet works well.
You can also use songs and actions with the puppet.

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Subject: Sound buttons


Author:
Nehal Chudasama (happy)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:23:10 04/14/09 Tue
Hi all,
I want share the idea of using the sound button flash cards to teach segmenting and blending of sounds.A sound button flash card is a card with a word written on it,for example the word 'champ' can be written as
ch. a. m. p.

you have a sound button(like little bullet points) under the letters,the first consonant digraph 'ch' has one button to show that 'c' and 'h' are sound friends and make a single sound together.
You can introduce different words with big flash cards to your class,touch the button under the letter and say the sound.Then try to blend it.Children can then come to you and press the sound button themselves.For the table activity you can have sound button cards for children,they can work in pairs and ask their partner to sound out the words.Children enjoy the idea of pressing the sound button to make the sound of letters.You can also turn into a phonic game.

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Subject: Sticky Letters


Author:
Priya
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:59:11 04/09/09 Thu
I am sharing my experience of doing the "Sticky Letters" activity (from Module 3 of the Synthetic Phonics practical route)

My phonics lessons usually take place in room which also doubles as our school’s music classroom. I decided to experiment the sticky letter activity in this room because there were several musical instruments around in addition to the regular classroom furniture.

I wrote out letter sounds on the sticky notes and gave them out to the children.

Once I was certain that the children understood what they had to do, they started exploring the classroom, enthusiastically looking for objects to stick their sticky notes on. This activity really got them thinking about their initial letter sounds and associating that with the correct object. Before ending the lesson, I chose a few objects and tested a few children on the letter sounds that represent that object, and surprisingly, they remembered most of them.

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Subject: Read Write Inc by Ruth Miskin


Author:
Rochelle Thomson
[Edit]
Date Posted: 05:55:33 03/30/09 Mon
Hi
Does anyone have experience using the Read Write Inc synthetic phonics course? I would like to know opinions about how it complares to Letters and Sounds and specifically, when does the split digraph/magic e get introduced.
Thanks

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Subject: Spelling mneumonics


Author:
Ruth
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:49:35 03/23/09 Mon
This site is a great resource for spelling aids (mneumonics)

www.learninginfo.org/spelling-mneumonics.htm

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Subject: /th/ sound


Author:
David Hosking
[Edit]
Date Posted: 16:23:49 03/09/09 Mon
/th/ words in Thailand

The class is getting used to dealing with the concept of having two letters representing one sound, so I didn’t get as many puzzled looks with the introduction of the “th” sound as with their first digraph. They seemed to tolerate the situation again when I told them that these letters together can also stand for another sound though similar.
When it came for the class to practice saying it, I can honestly say that this letter sound is the hardest one that they have had to pronounce.
Most of the class offered the /f/ sound instead. I had to stand in front of them many times demonstrating that they should put their tongue under their front teeth to make the sound successfully. The class seemed surprised at how difficult it was, but were determined to get it right.
On most days, I’m able to check their progress as we go over ordinals for the date and sample words on the wall. Most of the class can now say the sound well, but it tends to come out a little over stressed.
I don’t know if this is true, but a friend of mine told me that English is the only language that uses this sound.

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Subject: CVC Game


Author:
Ruth
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:56:47 03/11/09 Wed
My tutor asked me to share this game ....


Jump In (4 – 6 children)
This is a game for children who know most of their letter sounds and need reinforcement in sound blending and manipulation..

Three chalk squares are drawn on ground, or three hoops placed on ground (depending on whether the game is played indoors or outdoors). The hoops are labeled initial, middle and final. To reinforce this concept the adult can placed letter cards in each hoop and check children understand by asking ‘ Where is the /s/’?, etc. Children sit in a line facing the hoops and are given 2 – 3 letter cards which they place in front of them. Check children recognize the letters. (The task can be differentiated by giving some children more or less letter cards)

The adult gives a demonstration and places 1 child in each hoop. The children hold up their letter cards so that a CVC word is spelt. The other children are encouraged to read the word. As children become more confident they are encouraged to ‘jump in’ and replace a child so that a new word is made, e.g. ‘hen ‘ –‘pen’, ‘cat- cap’, ‘sit – sat’, etc. This enables child to see that by changing letters new words can be made.

I have even tried this with non-words in order to consolidate children’s decoding ability.

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Subject: Magic ‘e’


Author:
Lily Youakim
[Edit]
Date Posted: 22:24:09 02/28/09 Sat
Hi everyone, I've been asked to share some ideas for use when teaching Magic ‘e’.
Magic ‘e’ is introduced after straight forward sounds have been covered. Before children do any activity I do a quick revision about vowel names and sounds. I say them out loud using a vowel wall chart which shows long and short vowel words and their pictures.
To teach magic ‘e’, I write some examples of CVC words on the board. I show how the addition of magic ‘e’ changes the middle vowel and says its name instead of its sound, by using a ‘magic wand’ attached to letter ‘e’ on top. Every time we need to add magic ‘e’, we need the touch of the wand to make the vowel sound long; at the same time children read words on both sides to recognize the difference before and after using the magic ‘e’.
To reinforce children’s understanding, teacher can help them make a magic ‘e’ book. Each vowel would be written on the left hand side page with two words, one says the sound- CVC- but the other says the name CVCV. Children put two relevant pictures on the adjacent right page. All vowels could be displayed in that book to help children learn how magic ‘e’ works.
Children enjoy matching cards of short vowel pictures to other cards of long vowel pictures. They read a card with a CVC word and try to find the other card that has a ‘magic e’ added to the same CVC letters. They read both words and see and hear the difference.

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Subject: Bingo


Author:
Lily
[Edit]
Date Posted: 21:22:58 01/31/09 Sat
My tutor asked me to share this game which practises CVC words.
Bingo is a popular game which I use to practice CVC words.
Children sit on a circle. I give out sheets with CVC words. I use cards with a CVC word printed on the left side while a full colour corresponding picture printed on the right hand side of the card. Every time I draw up a card the children mark the word on their sheet. By the time I draw the final card, everybody goes ‘Bingo!’ because all of them have the same word written randomly on their sheet.

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Subject: How effective the textbook is


Author:
Lily Youakim
[Edit]
Date Posted: 01:25:06 01/29/09 Thu
I had the course textbook before I started this course. I used it during the summer to tutor a child who was moving up to year two. He didn’t know letter names or sounds, maybe two or three. He had very little vocabulary and couldn’t speak good English.
First, I aimed to foster his speaking and listening.
Next, I taught him phonic work by using the textbook.
I spent around 25 hours with him. Although I couldn’t finish teaching him all the sounds, his achievement was recognizable. He was able to memorize the phonemes he had learned during that period, read and spell CVC words, and short sentences. He mother was impressed with the result. That’s why I wanted to do this successful course.

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Subject: Phonological Awareness


Author:
Regina
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:58:43 12/26/08 Fri
Phonological awareness is essential for a child’s ability to achieve reading and spelling success. The child must be able to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken language. This ability includes manipulation of rhymes, words, and syllables. Spoken and written language differs in important ways. While words and letters have spaces between them, spoken language appears seamless. Its segmented nature is not obvious. For children who do not implicitly break words into segmented sounds for reading and spelling, this internal phonological structure is obscure. Therefore, research has found that children unable to do phonological tasks such as matching beginning sounds, rhyming, deleting sounds, categorizing words by sound, or segmenting sounds are highly likely to be poor readers.

I am using the Project Read program which basically follows the same structure of the Synthetic Phonics Program listed in 4.1. I start by pre-testing my students by using 6 different test and they are:
1. Phonemic Awareness
2. Words/Sounds
3. Spelling
4. Oral Reading
5. Sight Words
6. Writing
This gives me a basis on where to begin my tutoring sessions that will best help my students. Project Read is very teacher/user friendly with lesson plans already laid out for you. Of course, one can add additional information that goes along with a particular ‘sound’. Project Read has a clear rational for its structure, progressive structure, techniques to make plenty of words, does not use unfamiliar or archaic words, avoids inappropriate words, and delays the Magic ‘e’ rule until late in the lesson plans.

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Subject: rymes to teach phonics


Author:
zainab (:))
[Edit]
Date Posted: 07:01:00 12/26/08 Fri

hello everyone i found these sites helpful for teaching phincs


http://www.teachingheart.net/sing.html
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/home.jsp

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Subject: Older children and Phonics


Author:
Catherine Jones
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:17:41 09/27/07 Thu
I am a Support Assistant working mainly with older children who are still having difficulty reading at age 13. They are embarressed by their lack of reading skills and it is often difficult to get them to read because theysee synthetic phonics as 'baby talk'. It is only with patience and understanding that they can be encouraged to use letter sounds that will help them to decipher words and READ!

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Subject: Jolly Phonics actions for the letter sounds


Author:
Windy TONG
[Edit]
Date Posted: 00:12:03 09/27/07 Thu
I find that the Jolly Phonics actions for the letter sounds are very useful for the younger children I have been working with. The actions help them remember the sounds. Even they forget some of the sounds, the actions act as the clues to help them recall. Since I am working with children with dyslexia from age 6 to 14, the younger kids aged from 6 to 9 are more keen on the actions.

However, I still need to modify some of the actions for my students. For instance ¡§/t/ for moving two fingers as if tiptoeing and say /t/t/t/¡¨, ¡§/r/ for moving the fingers from up to down as if it is raining and say /r/r/r/¡¨, /p/ for flip the hand over and over as if frying pancakes, and say /p/p/p/.

For the older children, they think that the movements are too babyish. They are more reluctant to participate even though the actions help them remember the sounds better. They just look at the teacher to do the actions and say the sounds but they do not participate. Thus I cannot use all the actions/ movements from Jolly Phonics with older children. Then I use a lot of pictures they know to help their visual memory and remembering the sounds. However, I do think kinesthetic memory is very important. Thus I ask those children to think of words and actions themselves. In such case, they are more willing to participate as those actions are their ownership and success.

In fact, I have a student who is 11 years ago and loves cars very much. He knows a lot of names and models of cars. Thus with the pictures and the names of the cars, he is cooperative and remember the sounds better than forcing him to follow the actions. For instance, /b/ for ¡§Benz¡¨, /f/ for ¡¥Ferrari¡¦, /j/ for ¡§Jaguar¡¨, /l/ for ¡§Lamborghini¡¨, /m/ for ¡§Mercedes¡¨, /p/ for ¡§Porsche ,/t/ for ¡§Toyota, /v/ for ¡§Volkswagen¡¨, etc.

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Subject: Marking/checking children's work


Author:
Nicky Arnott
[Edit]
Date Posted: 05:04:46 05/21/06 Sun
Having just completed assignment 2, I included the following text which, although I naturally use every day, it wasn't until I wrote it down and proof read my work before I submitted it, that I realised how important my actions are. It read as follows:

Techniques to Encourage feelings of success.
When checking and marking the children’s finished work, praise should always be given for a correct answer and encouragement and further explanation should be given if the answer isn’t quite right. A ‘cross’ (x) should never be shown against an incorrect answer. The child must be given the opportunity to correct the answer and submit the amended worksheet for a ‘tick’.

(When I am working with the children in a group, I always make it clear to them that their answers are never ‘wrong’ when learning sounds, they are just not ‘quite right’. This results in a maximum mark of 10/10 and more confident encouraged and willing students).

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Subject: CVC word activities


Author:
Heidi
[Edit]
Date Posted: 05:39:06 11/02/08 Sun
Hi everyone, I've been asked to share some ideas for use when teaching CVCs. I hope they come in useful for someone!

Sand Tray Buried Treasure: I often hide small magnetic letters in the sand tray which the children can use to make their own words. When focusing on CVC words, I also hide small objects in the tray so that children can spell out the corresponding words. For example, a clothes PEG, a doll’s LEG, etc. For more able students, I sometimes provide labelled boxes where the items can be sorted according to their word ending. For less able students who find letter recognition difficult, I include labelled pictures of the CVC words so that they are able to create the word successfully before having to sound it out.

Ladybird word families: As part of the class minibeast theme, I made ladybirds with removable wings which can be used to make CVC words. The left wings have the letters a-z printed on them, whilst the right wings have common word endings (an, in, at, etc). The children can then match these up to create new words. They can be used during free activities or as a focus in a game situation. In the game, children win 2 points for every ‘real’ word they create and 1 point for a nonsense word which they can sound out successfully. By giving 1 point for a nonsense word, it eliminates the fear of failure and has worked especially well with less able children. For the free activity, I provide ladybirds with pictures of CVC words on their backs which the children use as stimulus for creating words.

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Subject: Helpful / Interesting Book for Synthetic Phonics students


Author:
R Thomson
[Edit]
Date Posted: 11:06:58 09/29/08 Mon
Hi everyone.
I am up to Module 3 on the course and just thought I would mention the book: Teaching Synthetic Phonics by Phona Johnston and Joyce Watson which I bought from Amazon. It is very up to date, published just last year, and demonstrates how to put Letters and Sounds into practice as well as more general phonics teaching and related issues. I have found it helpful and interesting supplementary reading. ISBN: 978 1 84445 121 0

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Subject: multi-sensory learning activities for F.E. student


Author:
janet buttree (helpful)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 05:43:57 08/07/08 Thu
The activities listed below may help to improve literacy skills and academic outcomes for students in F.E. They are preently being adapted for health and childcare students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, as well as their peers.

Games and activities used with health and social care students using a multisensory approach that also allows for differentiation:

Pairs. Matching key words and Pictures. Print and cut out up to 12 words and matching pictures related to the student’s course. Place them face down for the student to match up. (visual)

Prefix/suffix game. Print and cut out key root words and the matching prefix/suffixes on separate cards.
(Hilda King Educational Games Tel 01494 813947))

Alphabet wall chart with pictures using key words. (visual mental picture)

Jolly phonics - using and action for each letter sound. Get the student to make up their own actions. (kinetic. See course book: 3.2.3)

Clues. Print and cut out 12 key words with letter sounds and lay them out face up. Give the student a clue for each word so they can point it out. (visual and auditory)

Draw 26 squares and fill each one alphabetically using food words. A nutrition text book can be used as an aid. (visual/kinetic)

Hand writing key words in the air. (kinetic)

Matching key words. Print and cut out up to 12 words that are related to the student’s ability to blend words with different sounds, e.g. mug. (visual)

Word Search. Which homophone? Produce a cloze exercise with the homophones removed from the sentence.

Sticky letters games– using a sticky memo pad -list words with b and d in them and get the student to place them into 2 separate lines on the table.

Brainstorming by asking the students to build a mind map placing a specific sound in the centre e.g. ‘h’ to produce a key word spider gram related to the course e.g.

Use coloured highlighters to identify different sound and word blend/patterns

Sounding the letters of a difficult word out loud and repeating them back using a tape recorder (auditory)

Make a personal spelling dictionary -e.g. ‘a’ for appointment – with words broken down into syllables.

Bingo.
Make a set of bingo cards with 12 key words related to course. Keep a list of these words and shout them out at random until the student has a line a then a full house.

Use the magic ‘e’ rule – e.g. slid- slide.
List words with and without the magic ‘e’. And make a separate letter e for the student to place along the words to practise and read the words.

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Subject: Can't read can't write


Author:
Karen Penty
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:58:25 07/24/08 Thu
I watched the first episode of an excellent documentary called Can't Read Can't write on monday night. Nine illiterate adults enrol for a six month reading course with a determined and enthusiastic teacher Phil Beadle. The programme highlights the poor quality of the materials given to Beadle. Eventually, after doing his own reasearch, he decides to use the course test book we are using The Phonics Handbook by Sue Lloyd. It is extremely interesting to see how adults use the book and the different ways they interpret it. It is also very emotional to watch. It's on every Monday night for the next few weeks. Inspirational stuff.

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Replies:
Subject: phonics resources


Author:
Lesley Clarke
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:41:32 08/15/08 Fri
I am working as a part time CLLD consultant in London (also a part time reception teacher). At the moment many teachers are desperate for support with the teaching of synthetic phonics, especially Letters and Sounds, so I decided to set up a website to provide some of the resources they have been looking for. Much (but not all) of the site is specifically written to support Letters and Sounds. Consultants involved in improving the teaching of phonics in schools and local authorities may also find documents on the site that would be useful when doing training and in school support.

The web address is:
www.lesleyclarkesyntheticphonics.co.uk


I am going to be adding lots more to the site in the next few months, including a recommended resources section.

If there are any resources which you think teachers would particularly like to help with their teaching, please click on the wish list tab on the site and send in your ideas. I'll then see what I can create in the next few months!

Lesley Clarke

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Subject: my dyslexia


Author:
Sravan Kumar J (Idon't know)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 07:56:52 08/22/08 Fri
hi this is another man who dont know that he had dyslexia. ihave great problem with reading and in doing basic maths.but I could solve my dyslexia in my own way.
I know that i have reading problem from my childhood but never got any thought that i have dyslexia. this i over come my self by just reading with another friend i am good in explaining things.Iasked my friend to read for me and i used to explain things to himthats how i could over come my dyslexia in my chaild hood.but when i got in to my higher degree i dont find any such friend.Ifor the first time failed in exams,but i failed in only those subject where i need to read more and do simple maths (like in physical chemistry)and this even the time i learnd that i have dyslexia. ihave gone through different critisimsin my life for the first time. but in the end i could recover my problems,i started to read aloud.
although i now sometimes haveproblem in hearing the commands i asked them to repeatwhat they said.
Now i am working in university of minnesota,duluth,as a jr.scientist. Icould manage my problems,but when i need to do simple multiplications i just do it in very basic way

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Subject: Free Phonics Printables


Author:
Jane Buckley
[Edit]
Date Posted: 01:11:29 07/31/08 Thu
I have just stumbled on this forum and website. Why haven't I seen it before - it is very interesting and informative. I homeschool my children and live in New Zealand. I have my own phonics site where I have put up many of my printables to share. I am always learning something new about phonics and having to change my website to reflect this - but please stop by and see if my printables will be of use to you. You can find me here: http://www.atozphonics.com

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Subject: Module 5 - Gaps in a program


Author:
Kirsten
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:04:46 07/29/08 Tue
The phonics program I looked at for this exercise was “Letters and Sounds” which is a new program created by the government to replace their existing program “ Progression in Phonics” and “Playing with Sounds” The program is huge and very systematic . I found it hard to find any gaps in the sequence in which the letters were taught. However, I did feel that the letter “s” making not only the sound /s/ in plurals e.g. “tips”, but also /z/ as in “peas” could have been discussed more. It is talked about in the discussions of words such as “is”, “his” and “was” though. The greatest difference I could find between this program and the recommendations of the course were the order in which some of the sounds were taught. For example, consonant diagraphs and a number of vowel diagraphs are taught (course levels 3, 4 & 6) before consonant blends (course level 2). Furthermore, the “Letters and Sounds” program doesn’t include the magic ‘e’ rule simply teaching these cases as split diagraphs. I would conclude though, that I liked the program and I think it would be very easy to follow and use. I would be very interested to hear what anybody else thinks of this program or indeed any other program that people have looked at.

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Subject: Identifying difficult letters


Author:
Karen Penty
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:04:29 07/16/08 Wed
Among the most difficult letters to get children to remember are p,b,d and q. The advice in the booklet using the word bed with an illustration as a clue was very helpful. I wonder if other members of the group have encountered ways of teaching these letters (lower case) that enable children to remember them. They are very confusing.
Thanks,

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Subject: Assignment 5: looking up programs


Author:
Brenda
[Edit]
Date Posted: 23:55:43 07/14/08 Mon
Hi Everyone,
I was asked to post this to the discussion site, the site I looked at has some great resources and you can download some of the books for free to peruse thenm at your leisure.
Assignment 5
Practical Exercise - Looking up programs
I looked up phonics program on www.google.com, many programmes came up and I looked at many of them. Some of them, for example Ruth Miskin’s Read Write Inc and Jolly Phonics, are already known to me, so after a lot of consideration I chose the following site.
www.ProgressivePhonics.com
I chose this as it has a slightly different approach to most of the others I looked at. Initially it looked as if it was purely a reading programme; however on closer inspection I found that it was a sequential phonics scheme.
Each downloadable book starts with a page of illustrated instructions for the adult, stressing the importance of sharing, repetition, tracking, slow and sure progress and fun. Most of the books also gave ideas for multisensory ways of reinforcing the letter sounds and shapes and as the course progressed explanations of the ways in which the letters worked with one another.
I really liked the fact that as soon as the first 3 letters; d, o, g had been introduced (in the alphabet books) the children were given a book to share with an adult. The words the child is expected to be able to read are in red and it is made very clear that they do not read any other words.
The programme has a range of puzzles, memory games, handwriting sheets, directly relating to the letters and sounds being introduced at that level, and flash cards to use with the books. There is also the choice of using the on screen book or printing it off.
The vowels are not taught in the order that I teach them, magic ‘e’ being taught within some of the vowel combinations and not on its own level. However, the programme is such that you can take what you want from it, adapt it and slip it into whatever programme you are using as a base.
The books that form the base of the programme appear to appeal to young children, I don’t think they would appeal in the same way to older children.
Having looked at this programme I decided to try it out and I used this programme as a means of providing additional material for a young child with dyslexic traits, the red reading words mean she knows what she can read it reinforces her known words, in addition to this it stops her parents from forcing her to try and read words that she is not yet ready for and allows her to share a book with her parents in a more relaxed way. What a result, she is now willing to read to them and this combined with the ‘golden rule’ has made her life at home much less stressful.

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Subject: Confidence building


Author:
Sue Kemeys
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:05:25 07/12/08 Sat
I work with a lot of Junior children who have fallen behind in their literacy through lack of phonic knowledge for one reason or another. It may be that they have suffered from 'glue' ear at a particularly important stage in their early years in school and missed out on learning phonics or they may have dyslexia which makes learning phonics harder. When we work together, either 1-1 or in a small group situation it is quite important to keep up the encouragement and I have found that a good way of showing children just how many sounds they know is to go through a piece of text and get them to circle all the letter sounds that they can say correctly. This looks encouraging and shows them how well on the way they are to mastering the 44 sounds.

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Subject: Phonics Teaching


Author:
thiaga12
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:26:43 09/19/05 Mon
I would like to teach my students how to read with phonics. Any useful hints that can be given? I heard phonic zoos is quite good.

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Subject: Catching up with phonics


Author:
Sue Kemeys
[Edit]
Date Posted: 13:19:39 07/08/08 Tue
I am a TA in a primary school and although phonics is introduced very early on in a child's school life, sometimes it becomes apparent that they have missed out and it shows up in poor reading and writing skills further up the school. The child may have been suffering from colds or glue ear and not understood some of the sounds, so at my school we go over the phonics and the structure of words to ensure some catch-up.

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Subject: Nessy Learning Programme


Author:
Richard Harte
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:16:06 07/01/08 Tue
Hi all,

Just a quick note about the Nessy Learning Programme. My 8-year-old son is using this software at his school and the results have been astounding. It is a very large and very thorough program and I would highly recommend it to anyone. I think it's being used in quite a lot of schools actually since I know of two other families whose children are using it. I just thought you might like to know.

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Subject: Blending sounds using hoops


Author:
Kirsten (smile)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:43:48 06/26/08 Thu
I've been asked to share an activity I did from module 4.
This activity uses hoops to help children when they are practising blending sounds. You use 3 or 4 hoops depending on whether you are blending words with 2 or 3 sounds. The hoops are layed on the floor. To practice the word 'at' the child jumps into the first hoop and says the sound /a/, then jumps into the second hoop and says the sound /t/. Finally they jump into the last hoop and say the whole word 'at'.
I loved this exercise and so did the children. It gave us the perfect excuse to go outside into the playground and the children loved the whole physicality of jumping into the hoops whilst saying the sounds. There were still problems with some sounds, for example, the sound “s” to which the children continued to add “uh”. However, it was easily corrected within the context of the activity and by the end of the activity all three children were saying “ssssssssssss” with relative ease. I feel that this was partly due to the fact that the children were so enthusiastic about the activity they would say whatever sound they had to, to be allowed to jump into the hoops. Following some advice given by the class teacher the activity was extended a little. The children were asked to think of another sound which could replace the initial sound to make a new word. They were then asked to change the middle sound to make a new word. The children again seemed to greatly enjoy this challenge. It also gave them the opportunity of independently producing a sound. Changing the middle sound (the vowel sound) however proved far more difficult for them than changing the initial (consonant) sound.

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Subject: Golden Rule


Author:
Rhonda
[Edit]
Date Posted: 07:15:38 05/28/08 Wed
Thought I'd share how I have found using the 'Golden Rule' has benefited children.
I have tried this exercise on a couple of children in my class and I have found the same outcome each time. When I initially tell the children any word that they may get stuck on for the first few pages I noticed that the speed that they read increased, their enthusiasm for the story increased and how many pages they want to read also increased because their confidence had increased. However, when I reverted to letting them work out the word by encouraging them to say the first sound and guessing then their speed decreased, they seemed less willing to read as many pages as before and their enthusiasm seemed to have diminished profoundly. Which is why I now always follow the Golden Rule when listening to a child and am going to enquire as to whether this rule can be stuck into their Reading Record Book for the children’s parents to follow or even added to the parents guidance for reading at home.

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Replies:
Subject: DIY KIT for parents of struggling child


Author:
Tania Taylor
[Edit]
Date Posted: 01:05:35 06/12/08 Thu
The Dyslexia Institute have developed and produced the “DIY readers’ support pack”. This is aimed at parents but is also great for any individual teaching. It is suitable for all children and covers the early (foundation) stages of literacy. Structured exercises teach sound to letter relationships and simple sound blending. Correct sounds are encouraged (ssss not s-uh), a multisensory approach is used and progress charts are provided. This is a ready to go, easy to use program that is worth owning and could be recommended to parents who express a desire to help their child themselves as it has clear step by step instructions.

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Subject: Tactile Memory


Author:
Rhonda (smile)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 11:40:40 06/05/08 Thu
I've been asked to share one of my replies to Assignment 3, specifically where I shared the fact that I photocopied the child's whiteboard so that he could show his parents what he had achieved during this session.
For this exercise Child C made 6 letters (s,a,p,t,n,i) using pipe cleaners. I encouraged him to sound out the letters whilst he was making then and to think of as many words as possible that began with each word seeing how many we could think of. I then asked him to play around with the letters he had just made and make as many of those words he had thought of using the letters, I recorded those words on a white board after he had made them. For each word he sounded out each letter and then put them together to help him to say the word. He really enjoyed making and rearranging the letters and was pleased with the amount of words he had found. I photocopied the whiteboard so that he could have a copy to show his parents who the next day explained how Child C had enthusiastically sounded out and read each word to them as soon as they got home.

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Replies:
Subject: Tacile Letter Sounds


Author:
Kirsten
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:52:51 05/23/08 Fri
I've been asked to share with you an activity I completed during module 3. It was a great activity which the children loved so here goes.
From a secondary mathematics background I feel very privaledged as my international school is supporting me as I work with three boys in their primary section. However, I am not the class teacher-I simply go in once a week to try out the different activities from the synthetic phonics course. Having completed the certificate in the teaching of children with dyslexia I find that the present course is informing and consolidating a lot of my previous learning. Learning which I hope to be able to apply in my daily working life in the secondary school.
Being an international school the three boys I work with have different language backgrounds. One first language English boy who is thought to possibly have the dyslexic learning style, a second language English boy who has behavioural issues and a third boy who is truly EAL. They all bring their own challenges to the lessons.One has difficulites perhaps due to his learning style, one, although having had greater exposure to English, whose learning is slowed by his lack of attention, and the last one who is simply having to learn from scratch a whole new set of sounds on top of the sounds in his own language.

The purpose of this activity ( tactile letter sounds) is to choose some sounds for the children to trace out, stick glue and then salt or sand onto, and then, when dry, to run their fingers across. It is a lovely activity which had all three childrens' full attention. I think the fact that they each had their own salt cellar and glue stick facilitated the smooth running of the activity. The children did the sounds “ch”, “sh”, “ee” and “ie” The only sound they were truly unfamiliar with at the start of the activity was the “ie” sound. They greatly enjoyed tracing, clueing and sticking salt onto their sounds. Then they would run their fingers over the sound while saying it. One child actually repeated the last part of the activity when he had all four sounds on his paper- he then made the other two children do the same. As a follow up I asked the children to read four words for each of the sounds used in the activity. There was still some confusion over “ch” and “sh”. However, this is to be expected for the two second language English boys as the “ch “sound is soft in Portuguese. What was very nice to see was the children using the tactile activity to help them read their words . When stuck over the word “pie” one child was directed back to his sheet with the tracings. Seeing the sound once again and putting his fingers over it helped him to remember and read the word. I liked this aspect of the activity very much as it showed the activity to be not only loads of fun, but also extremely useful. I would definitely do this activity again.

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Subject: Tacile Letter Sounds


Author:
Kirsten
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:49:16 05/23/08 Fri
I've been asked to share with you an activity I completed during module 3. It was a great activity which the children loved so here goes.
From a secondary mathematics background I feel very privaledged as my international school is supporting me as I work with three boys in their primary section. However, I am not the class teacher-I simply go in once a week to try out the different activities from the synthetic phonics course. Having completed the certificate in the teaching of children with dyslexia I find that the present course is informing and consolidating a lot of my previous learning. Learning which I hope to be able to apply in my daily working life in the secondary school.
Being an international school the three boys I work with have different language backgrounds. One first language English boy who is thought to possibly have the dyslexic learning style, a second language English boy who has behavioural issues and a third boy who is truly EAL. They all bring their own challenges to the lessons.One has difficulites perhaps due to his learning style, one, although having had greater exposure to English, whose learning is slowed by his lack of attention, and the last one who is simply having to learn from scratch a whole new set of sounds on top of the sounds in his own language.

The purpose of this activity ( tactile letter sounds) is to choose some sounds for the children to trace out, stick glue and then salt or sand onto, and then, when dry, to run their fingers across. It is a lovely activity which had all three childrens' full attention. I think the fact that they each had their own salt cellar and glue stick facilitated the smooth running of the activity. The children did the sounds “ch”, “sh”, “ee” and “ie” The only sound they were truly unfamiliar with at the start of the activity was the “ie” sound. They greatly enjoyed tracing, clueing and sticking salt onto their sounds. Then they would run their fingers over the sound while saying it. One child actually repeated the last part of the activity when he had all four sounds on his paper- he then made the other two children do the same. As a follow up I asked the children to read four words for each of the sounds used in the activity. There was still some confusion over “ch” and “sh”. However, this is to be expected for the two second language English boys as the “ch “sound is soft in Portuguese. What was very nice to see was the children using the tactile activity to help them read their words . When stuck over the word “pie” one child was directed back to his sheet with the tracings. Seeing the sound once again and putting his fingers over it helped him to remember and read the word. I liked this aspect of the activity very much as it showed the activity to be not only loads of fun, but extremely useful. I would definitely do this activity again.

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Subject: Tacile Letter Sounds


Author:
Kirsten
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:25:59 05/23/08 Fri
I've been asked to share with you an activity I completed during module 3. It was a great activity which the children loved so here goes.
From a secondary mathematics background I feel very privaledged as my international school is supporting me as I work with three boys in their primary section. However, I am not the class teacher-I simply go in once a week to try out the different activities from the synthetic phonics course. Having completed the
The children thoroughly enjoyed this game. I think the fact that they each had their own salt cellar and glue stick facilitated the smooth running of the activity. They did the sounds “ch”, “sh”, “ee” and “ie” The only sound they were truly unfamiliar with at the start of the activity was the “ie” sound. They greatly enjoyed tracing, clueing and sticking salt onto their sounds. Then they would run their fingers over the sound while saying it. One child actually repeated the last part of the activity when he had all four sounds on his paper- he then made the other two children do the same. I then ask them to read four words for each of the sounds. There was still some confusion over “ch” and “sh”. However, this is to be expected for the two first language Portuguese boys as the “ch “sound is soft in Portuguese. W hat is very nice to see are again the children using the previous activity to help them with their reading. When stuck over the word “pie” one child was directed back to his sheet with the tracings. Seeing the sound once again and putting his fingers over it helped him to remember and read the word. I liked this activity very much.

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Subject: Understanding Dyslexia


Author:
Anne Marie Noone
[Edit]
Date Posted: 13:10:23 04/20/08 Sun
While working on my phonics course, I was talking to a teacher from a local school, discussing the teaching of dyslexic children. I was stunned when he/she told me that to get any help in that I would have to go to the Special Needs school. Apparently, he/she thinks that the dyslexic child has more than a learning disability. I know that they are dyslexic children going through the school system without any help but where do you start when the teachers has no understanding of what dyslexia really means.

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Subject: Shaping the Letter/ Shaping the Future!!


Author:
Tania Taylor
[Edit]
Date Posted: 05:16:19 04/17/08 Thu
My dyslexic brother, who is now in his forties got no help from school with his learning difficulties. He eventually learnt to read when our mother cut out a SANDPAPER alphabet and taught him with a tactile phonics approach. She had no training and new nothing of "phonics" and "multisensory techniques" but even without guidance and advice the approach worked.
My brother......now a CARPENTER of course.

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Subject: Children Who Speak Nonstandard Dialects of English


Author:
Manzor L. Jaien
[Edit]
Date Posted: 11:22:46 10/10/06 Tue
I would like to say that the children who speak nonstandard dialects of English may be greater risk of reading and spelling difficulties. But I don’t say that this is a symptom of dyslexia.

With regard to the reading instruction in particular, the risk for confusion is considerable. For example, if the teacher is pointing out the letter-sound correspondences within a word that is pronounced quite differently in the child's dialect than in the teacher's, the lesson could confuse more than enlighten.

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Subject: Confusion with sounds


Author:
Dara McAlinden
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:41:20 04/10/08 Thu
This point was one I raised in my Module 1 assignment. I have been asked to contribute it to the discussion group.I have observed how a range of speech problems contribute greatly to a child’s ability to read or spell. The most common one I have found is substituting the ‘th’ sound, particularly at the beginning of words for the ‘f’ or ‘v’ sound. Resulting in the word the becoming ‘ve’ , three becomes ‘free’ and so on. Also many children including my own son have difficulty with the ‘c’, ‘k’ and ‘g’ sound many of them can make this sound and can do so in words such as words such as walk, duck and dog. But for the initial sound words such as coat become ‘toat’, kitten becomes ‘titten’ and goat becomes ‘doat’. When it comes to written work many children experience spelling difficulties because they write the words as they pronounce them.

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Subject: Multisensory Activity


Author:
Anne Marie Noone
[Edit]
Date Posted: 11:46:41 04/01/08 Tue
One activity I found to be successful, instead of using sandpaper, get the children to cut out templates of the letters (supervised). Coat one side with glue and then get the children to sprinkle glitter on them. The glitter can be different colours or multi-coloured. When completed they have a rough texture, which the child can feel by running their finger over it, looks attractive and the child will remember the shape of the letter from cutting it out (kinesthetic). As they cut out each letter, say the sound the letter makes and get the child to repeat it.

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Subject: Synthetic Phonics Programs


Author:
Avril Leech
[Edit]
Date Posted: 04:37:33 02/09/08 Sat
I have taught in private international schools for many years and when the DEFS started talking about "sythetic phonics" I, like many teachers wondered what on earth they were talking about. Were they trying to invent the wheel? Was this a complete new way of learning? What I have learnt, however is that this is the way that most teachers of the "Old School" have been teaching for years. The difference is that then teachers had little support when teaching phonics and many were left to create their own material. Inevitably there were many gaps and learning was very much by rote. How things have changed. We are now bombarded with so much choice, each extolling the virtues of their schemes. It is important, therefore, that we keep the core criteria of the Rose Report in mind.

When researching for Module Five I realised just how many schemes were out there, including schools who had invented their own systems. Some obviously meet the criteria and others do not.

When purchasing a scheme it is important that this is bought in full and is consistently worked through. I have seen instances where one scheme is introduced in Reception and then changed in Year 1. This to me in inappropriate as children need, and enjoy, continuity. For example, to start with Letterland in Nursery and Reception and then to change to Jolly Phonics in Year 1 would not make much sense.

There are, however, new schemes which rely much more on the interactive whiteboard. These schemes are as yet unproven and involve children sitting in front of yet another device. Although there is obviously interaction by some children it very much depends on how the teacher uses the system. Yes, children seem to enjoy it at the beginning but the technology does not always work. When observing a class recently the program broke down twice. A little voice from somewhere in the classroom was heard to say "Please Miss. Why don't you just teach us yourself?"

Does anybody else in this Forum have any views on the use of interactive whiteboards within the Infant Classroom?

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Subject: Worksheets for 7 -9 years


Author:
Anne Marie Noone
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:28:33 03/19/08 Wed
I am presently working with Pam a 8yr old. At present the worksheets that I have are not suitable as she considers them childish. Hoping that someone could give me a web site address where I could find ones for that age group. Tried several sites myself but with no luck.

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Subject: multisensory reminders


Author:
Jo
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:16:59 03/19/08 Wed
this is an extract from my assignment 3, which I was asked to share.

Remembering and learning things is a skill we all have to master at an early age. Babies and toddlers use all their senses when they are exploring their environment, putting toys in their mouths, watching, and listening to their mums. This is not formal learning, but a natural way of developing. When young children arrive at school, they are still very much keyed into this multisensory way of approaching things. Think of a child walking to school. How many times have you noticed them stop and feel a leaf on a bush, or even pick it and smell it? I know this is very true for my own children, as often I have to hurry them along "else we'll be late"! Children naturally want to explore the object they have seen. For them seeing it is not enough.

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Subject: A tactile memory


Author:
Jo
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:30:40 03/17/08 Mon
We decided as a family to make a set of letters out of fimo, so that we could keep them and use them again for games. E became very good at shaping the letters. Her favourite word that she made was “ant”, however later on she needed some extra fimo for her model of an ant and so used the “n” from her word. She then shouted aloud, saying “look, I made a new word, at!” This then became a new game and we laid letters out, shuffling them around to make new words. This is essentially the same exercise as in module 1, but was enjoyed by E much more using the fimo letters. I continued to make the whole alphabet and E even reminded me that I would need two “e” , “o” and “l” letters for her to make up words with. I think that E learns far better with tactile experiences than by reading, or listening.

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Subject: tongue twisters


Author:
Jo Gilhooly
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:28:30 03/17/08 Mon
I have used tongue twisters as an aid for my own son, who has a speech and language disorder. He loves trying to say them as fast as he can, and often manages very well. I have been using them as a training method for over two years now, introducing new ones every so often. The hardest ones for him are the ones where his mouth has to change shape quickly, as in “she sells sea shells”. I decided to sit down with him and look at them from a new angle, and so we read “peter piper” and discussed what it was all about. He quickly understood that the predominate sound was p. He finds this the hardest one to say fast, possibly because most of the words are not words that he would use normally. I know he enjoyed this, because since then he has been making up his own tongue twisters for me to try!

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Subject: Letter Sound Bags.


Author:
Carolyn Heaney
[Edit]
Date Posted: 04:20:44 02/10/08 Sun
I am writing to let other students know about how to support young children with learning their letter sounds in a really child friendly way giving the child a concrete learning experience.This involves a lot of collecting and perhaps making, but I assure you it is most worthwhile in the end.
I first came across these lovely litle cotton ecru colour bags (aprox size 25cm by 22cm) in Germany but they may also be available in any craft shop.Or if you are good with a sewing machine you could always make them.Don't forget the handles as the children love to carry them around.I then used fabric paint to paint each one with a letter of the alphabet in lower case. So you will have 26 bags in total. As a Montessori teacher we have constonants and vowels in diferent colours. So the constonants were painted red and the vowels were painted blue.
Next I began collecting small objects and pictures ( I laminated the pictures to keep them looking good for longer.)to represent each letter sound. For example for the "a" bag I found plastic ants, apples, toy astronaut and antelope.I also included a sandpaper letter mounted on card so the child can feel the form of the letters. What you include depends on what you can manage to find, but if you are in a nursery or school you could ask the children to make their contributions to the bags.Just make sure the objects and pictures represent the sound of each letter not the name.
The objective is that each child or groups of children play with one letter sound bag at a time. The teacher talks to the group about each object or picture. This promotes discusion and introduces new vocabulary.
An extension activity is to have the children play with two bags at a time.I enjoy making up short stories trying to include as many of the objects in the story as I can.
Finally ask each child to put away an object into the correct bag one at a time. This way you can assess the child's understanding of the letter sound without them feeling under any preasure.
Good luck with the collecting ,don't forget to check the charity shops and jumble sales and ask family and friends. Believe me this provides the young child with a fantastic way of learning their letter sounds.

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Subject: the /q/ sound


Author:
fenny (jolly)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 10:37:51 03/07/08 Fri
i am studying thrass phonics programme which gives /q/ as having the same sound as /c/ /ck/ /ch/ /k/. I am in my forties and still learning letter sounds as we were deprived of this knowledge when we were young. Has anyone got a problem with /q/ being associated with the other sounds above or is it only me?

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Subject: The Montessori Method of Education and Letters and Sounds.


Author:
Carolyn Heaney
[Edit]
Date Posted: 11:34:28 02/12/08 Tue
When Letters and Sounds: Principals and Practice of High Quality Phonics(DFES 2007) was introduced I was delighted, because as a Montessori teacher, teaching the sounds of the letters was something I had always done. Maria Montessori placed a great deal of emphasis on the first six years of the child's life. She wrote a great deal about the importance of language development during this period. And from her interest she devised many educational materials.To give the child a sensory experience she made sandpaper letters for the child to feel the shape of each letter. Another wonderful learning material was called the large movable alphabet (cut out letters in a tray each in their own compartment) The young child could then word-build even before he/she could write. To help with writihg skills children in a Montessori class use inset shapes, tracing over the curves of for eg circles and ovals and the straight lines of for eg rectangles and squares.The Montessori Method had it's centenary in 2007 marking the opening of the first school. This approach has always advocated phonics and multi-sensory teaching methods.

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Subject: Unfamiliar or Archaic Words


Author:
Pamela Christie
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:57:41 01/30/08 Wed
The ‘Bangers and Mash Phonics Programme’ has a phonic reading scheme, which is well established at our school. ‘Sound Start’ has been introduced recently through being carried out by the local linked Infant School. They found the reading book scheme successful with their pupils and recommended its continuity for pupils transferring to our Junior School from their school.

Bangers & Mash

Bangers and Mash base their core reading books on a careful structure to provide continuity and progression in reading and phonic awareness. I found there were words that the children did not recognise or understand their meanings some examples were: –

· Flop
· Prods
· Plop

To support the children I used a multi-sensory approach to explain the meanings of the words by using: -


· A Kinaesthetic approach: Flop – I said to the children “ I’m tired, (yawned) I’m going to flop on to the chair”. I encouraged the children to observe my movement and say the word ‘flop’.

· A Tactile/Visual approach: Prod – I asked a child to* poke a teddy bear with her finger and I asked the other children to say, (playfully) “ Oh don’t prod teddy he won’t like it”! *I did explain to the children that poke meant the same as prod.

· An Auditory approach: Plop – For this word I filled a bowl with water and dropped a stone into the water. I asked the children to listen and say what sound they heard when the stone was dropped into the water; each child said it sounded like ‘plop’.


Through using these multi-sensory approaches to learn the unfamiliar words the children could make sense of the words and know their meanings. It also gave them a way to remember them if they came across them in the text again when they were reading. I did check if the children had remembered the words in the next learning session; each child could remember the words and how they learnt them.


In each reading book there is information to the parents/teachers about the aim of the series being presented in the reading scheme. The aim lists the main sounds and language under the headings of short vowels, double consonant endings, rare phonic words and sounds etc. There is no heading for unfamiliar words in the text the children would come across when reading the books. As this reading scheme is familiar to our Learning Support Assistants we know that these words exist in certain reading books. To resolve this problem we use a multi-sensory teaching approach and methods to support the children with learning unfamiliar words.







Sound Start

Soundstart is a carefully levelled reading programme, which combines a clear phonics structure. The reading scheme creates a gradual approach with decodable texts that introduce phonic patterns, sight vocabulary, speech and sound-letter correspondence,
which is recognised by children. I looked through a wide selection of the phonic books at different levels and found more than a few words that the children would find unfamiliar e.g.: -

· Indeedy
· Whether
· Boomed
· Bobbing


The words ‘whether’ and ‘indeedy’ are words that we don’t really use much in modern English language. Children with Dyslexia would get confused between the words ‘whether’ and ‘weather’, (as would other children). The strategy I would instigate to support the children would be a drill and practice approach, by using flashcards of the words (segmented) and their meanings, To double-check the children are able to recognise the difference between the words ‘whether’ and ‘weather’ give the children both words and their meanings. Another way to distinguish between the two words would be word and picture association e.g. picture of the sun, snow, and rain to represent the word ‘weather’. For the word ‘indeedy’ a picture of a cowboy with a speech bubble saying Yes indeedy! To emphasise the word say it in an exaggerated American accent, (word meaning also would be included on the flashcard). The children then could be given a challenge to learn the words, their meanings and say them to an adult.


In connection with the words ‘boomed’ and ‘bobbing’ these words are onomatopoeia words. The word ‘boomed’ can be learnt through voice tone to show them it means loud by saying the word. It then can be explained that the word sounds like the thing it is describing. To support the children further use word and picture association showing a picture of a ringmaster in the circus arena standing by a cannon with a speech bubble with the word b o o m! written in it. To reinforce the word ‘bobbing’ use movement and ask the children to move up and down saying the word bobbing. It would be a good idea for the children to write these words in a notebook and the adult supporting them check each session if they can say and remember the words and their meanings. These are the strategies and methods I’d use if carrying out this phonics programme. The programme did not have a glossary to tell teacher /parent about unfamiliar or archaic words that children would come across in certain reading books of the phonic scheme.


Giving the children a multi-sensory choice to learn will encourage and motivate them, as they are learning through their own preferred learning style. It also creates a learning environment where children want to learn and are confident enough to try through being supported appropriately.

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Subject: worksheets


Author:
Julie Dyer
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:29:30 01/21/08 Mon
Often worksheets can seem daunting to a child, dyslexic children face failure on a daily basis and faced with extra work to fail at will only add to the misery of their school day. Any programme needs to be user friendly, if the child sees a folder filled with lots and lots of sheets that are filled with big words they will go into shut down before they even begin to look at the work. The first impression is very important, it must look like fun, it must be something they look forward to, something to be 'good' at, always allowing them to achieve, never moving on until the lesson has been revisited and becomes second nature. The adult must always seem to enjoy these lessons, even if tired you must be enthusiastic.

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Subject: "Glue ear"


Author:
Avril Leech
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:06:21 01/14/08 Mon
Glue ear is much more common than realized. It is estimated that seven out of ten children will have at least one episode before they reach the age of four. In most cases it only lasts a short while and boys are more commonly affected than girls. If dulled hearing is not noticed, then children may not progress as well at school. It is extremely important that teachers are made aware of the condition and can monitor a child's progress. Some children cope with this very well but I have seen cases where children can become de-motivated or show aggressive behaviour. As each child is different, they cope with disabilities in varying ways. Some can become aggressive or withdrawn whilst others become de-motivated. Research has proved that children with glue ear usually progress at the correct level once the problem has been addressed. I have taught three children from the same family with this condition. I was always aware that they should be placed in the classroom where they could hear and would often reiterate what I had said. They have all progressed well since their condition was assessed and grommets used.

It is interesting to note that "glue ear" is more common in children who: live in homes where people smoke; were bottle fed rather than breast fed; have frequent coughs, colds, or ear infections; have a brother or sister who has had glue ear.

It has been thought that children with this condition develop behavioural problems but research is reassuring and studies have shown that, on average, children with glue ear have no more chance (or just a little more chance) of having long term behavioural problems or poor school performance, compared with children without glue ear. This study is, of course, based on the early diagnosis of the problem.

I hope readers find this interesting!

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Subject: Techniques for success - differentiation


Author:
Pamela Christie
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:36:03 01/12/08 Sat
My school has a reward system for children to achieve certificates for learning times table facts. For example to gain a certificate for the ‘Bronze Award’ the children have to recall the 2,3, 5’s and 10 x table facts. The special needs children find the challenge daunting, due to the amount of facts they have to learn. This is mainly due to certain children with special needs having short-term memory, which causes difficulty in retaining these facts. This has created a disadvantage for them because of their learning difficulty.


I feel it would be better if they differentiated and had individual times table certificates e.g. 2x tables 3x etc. The children then could learn these facts and not be so overwhelmed with the amount they have to learn. I would appreciate any other ideas on this subject, as I feel the reward system needs to be made more achievable for SEN children.

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Subject: channel 4 learn to read programmes


Author:
Rosalind WHite
[Edit]
Date Posted: 13:18:46 10/23/07 Tue
Just reminding students about the series of programmes of channel 4 this week at 9pm. It outlines synthetic phonics methods of teaching and teaching children to read. Looks interesting. WOuld be interested in your views

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Subject: Expansion of Practical Exercise "Breaking Up Longer Words"


Author:
Georgia Sumner
[Edit]
Date Posted: 16:39:16 10/09/07 Tue
I have been asked to contribute to the Discussion Forum by expanding my answer to "Breaking Up Longer Words", to include the context, the child's age, my role, etc.; so, here is my story.

If you remember, the last Practical Exercise in Unit 4 is to "Write some of the words from the box above. Ask a child or some children to try to break them up into syllables. Accept different ways of breaking a word up as long as it is sensible. Write about how the children got on." This is my response: 'I presented a list of some of the words, in lower case print (by hand), to my 15 year old student. I said we would go over each word before she started, thinking it would be best if I knew that she knew what she was reading. She immediately took a pencil, before we had read the words, and went down the list dividing the words into the correct syllables and then said, "So... what do they say?" She said she caught on, a long time ago that when people hand print words they leave a small space where the words divide into syllables. That was not so for the majority of these list words. I was stunned, as I know she can read CVC words and Magic 'e' words. I had thought that if she could divide the words into syllables she would have found a way to decode them. We went over the list slowly, for sound; but I will take her through the Phonics Assessment so I can find out what Levels she needs to learn.'

I am a retired registered nurse. My son (29 now) is dyslexic and doing well now. Ten years ago when I finished nursing I started to work with adults in the volunteer literacy program. I took the STAPLE (Supplemental Training for Practitioners in Literacy Education) certificates (by Dr. Pat Campbell and Flo Brokop, M.ED.; published by Grassroots Press); but realized soon after that adults that can't read either haven't been taught or are dyslexic and this course did not address the latter. That brought me to this site where I took the Certificate in the Teaching of Children with Dyslexia (or similar difficulties). Now I am taking the Synthetic Phonics Certificate. When a local Family Literacy organization found out I had these certificates they said they'd like to start a new parent support program, where the worker goes into the home to give parents a break by playing with the dyslexic child for an hour or two a week while supper is being made. We help with reading, homework, and games that address reading problems while parents watch in the background (always with the parents and school as the main educators). These parents have always learned new ways of working with their children... so exciting! That is me!

I met A. at the beginning of the summer. She is a bright 15 year old that says she has a grade one reading level. Her mother just wanted to keep her linked to some form of support to keep tackling the reading problems. A's mother said she was a normal bright child until she received her immunizations at the preschool level; then the teacher asked what was wrong with A. because she didn't know what scissors were. A.'s mom said A. had been using scissors since she was 2 and they had to teach her these types of skills over again at 4. A. was placed into French immersion for Preschool, Kindergarten, and Grade 1. From there she went to an English speaking Montessauri type school until Grade 5, when she attended a regular class for the first time. She couldn't cope, and that is when testing and homeschooling began. She was diagnosed dyslexic with a strong visual learning style (very weak auditory skills) and marked right/left confusion. In the last year she has passed two Grade 9 courses, English and Social Studies I believe, by distance learning with oral exams (over the phone).

Basically, this teen had said she was fed up and didn't want to go to school any more. I wanted to bond with her and didn't know quite where to begin. She couldn't find her way around this new town that she and her family had just moved to, so we met downtown, where I got her to take photographs of different signs. We took about 75 pictures that day. By the time we were done she was willing to continue working with me. After that I suggested that making a game with directions and trivia questions might be fun and she has had a great time working with me to build it. I tried to have her draw her sounds with her own picture and movements (and sound story) and even though she has worked on it, her heart isn't in it and it has taken all summer. She still hasn't completed it. Basically she knows individual sounds and Magic 'e' but not paired sounds, ie. blends, digraphs and the more difficult multi-letter sounds. As we worked I realized that she always had to look at a word to figure out how many sounds a word had, so I presented a lot of games to her from the Florida Center for Reading Research web-site on phoneme awareness. Our last game was playing War (as in the regular children's card game) by presenting picture cards without the word printed and seeing which player had the most sounds in their word. She teased me by adding adjectives on to the word, eg. instead of coat, she would count the sounds in 'hot red coat'. She had great fun when I started to do it too - and she won! She can now count the sounds in a word and most times get it right. I am thinking that the next step should be flash cards representing the more complicated sounds to address her weak recognition of these phonics sounds. Her reading level has changed from a very limited Grade 1, sounding each sound separately, to paired reading (I read a sentence, she reads a sentence) of Grade 3-4 level books, where I give her the word if she takes longer than 3 seconds to sound it out. The books she loves have words that are printed in bold colours and patterns through the book to represent their action or description. I have also taken her to the library to find the adult learners section, so she can find older age level books that more suit her interests and needs at this age. There do not seem to be any teenage level lower reading skill books easily available. Maybe someone on this site could point me to a line of these books. A. now has a text to speech reader on her computer that has given her a great deal more freedom. At present the family cannot afford to install a homophone toolbar or good speech to text system. She has a long road to travel. All I can do is keep being here lending a hand, until she feels enough courage to attend school again. That may happen in January, apparently.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long submission.

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Subject: multi sensory activities


Author:
Julie Dyer
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:18:34 07/02/07 Mon
Subject: Re: multi-sensory activities


Author:
Julie Dyer
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Date Posted: 12:13:53 07/02/07 Mon
In reply to: Sue Maddox 's message, "multi-sensory activities" on 05:16:04 04/20/06 Thu

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We also use the stile boxes which the children really enjoy, and there are quite a few varieties to choose from, the children also enjoy swap cards, which have different phonics on each different pack so you can choose from CVC or blends etc, the children often become quite competetive when playing you but they soon learn the rule without even realising they are working!!

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Subject: Handwriting Practice


Author:
Catherine Jones
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:28:27 09/27/07 Thu
Writing in a cursive style in the air with big movements or using a large felt tip pen onlarge pieces of paper, gives the child a better idea of how to shape and remember the letter. We can even use sandpaper letters. Children can feel the rough sandpaper with their fingers. Make letters out of play dough. If each child makes their own letters out of play dough they will feel better about owning them and learning with them.

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Subject: Practise letter sounds using multi-sensory game


Author:
Windy Tong
[Edit]
Date Posted: 10:02:34 09/12/07 Wed
I have tried this game with children with Dyslexia before. They love it very much and are interested in it. They always request to play the game again and again.

BINGO
Teacher get a blank 3 x 3 or 4 x 4 grid card. The teacher goes through the target sounds or words with the children. When the children are familiar with the phonemes or words, the teacher gives them the blank grid cards.

To start with an easy task, the children are asked to fill the grid with the phonemes they know. The teacher has a set of cardrs with all the learnt phonemes. As the teacher calls out each phoneme, the child has to call out if they have the same phoneme on the card. They put a counter on top of the phoneme on their grid card until they get all teh phonemes in a row, a column or a diagonal. The child who achieves this first says 'bingo' and then has to say all the covered phonemes on the card.

To have a challenging task, the teacher revises the target words with the children before starting the game. The children are asked to fill in the grid cards with the target words. Similarly, the teacher has a set of cards with all the target words. As the teacher calls out each word, the child has to call out if they have the same word on the card. They put a counter on top of teh word on their grid card until they get all the words in a row, a column or in a diagonal. The one who comes first needs to call out bingo ad say all the covered words on the card.

TO reduce the repetitiveness, the teacher continues until everyone has got all in a row, column or diagonal, making everyone a winner.

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Subject: Multisensory games to practice letter sounds


Author:
Georgia Sumner
[Edit]
Date Posted: 11:51:25 09/10/07 Mon
Hi! I made a couple of games that may come in handy for you to use with your students.

Game 1: Sound Addition Horserace
This game needs a horserace type gameboard. Each child is given a card with the last two letters of a CVC word on it. Each card is different. For each move the child pulls a sound shape out of a bag (or box, something where the shape is hidden). The child will then say the sound and add it on to the word ending they have. If the word is completed without help, the child can move two spaces. If the child needs help, he or she can move one space. This is a competative game so should not be used too often. The game can be played again and again, changing the _VC card given to each child. To change the game the card could be a CV_ card.

Game 2: Clay Sound/Story Modelling
While the teacher tells the story behind a sound/movement/picture link, the child takes a hollow letter shape (a fridge magnet type) and presses it into rolled out modelling clay, saying the sound while forming the sound shape. Several of the same shape should be made, taking a moment to do the sound movement between each. The tactile process of handling the plastic shape, pressing the shape, removing the shape, and then smoothing the clay shape all help to reinforce sound/shape/movement input. If using a hardening clay, the shapes can be used in other games. If they break, new ones are made repeating the process.

I got the second game from a 15 year old girl that I am working with right now. The only thing that wasn't done when she was in this primary activity was the movement linked with each sound. She said that, for some reason her mind settled down and the story made sense while she was slowly forming the letters linked to the story, so it helped her remember the letter/sound link. Her problem at present is that she doesn't differentiate the different sounds in a word so we are working on counting phonemes and playing games to do with that. If anyone has extra help they can offer me in that area I would appreciate it.

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Subject: Activity for activity's sake


Author:
Joanne Jalkanen
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:24:10 08/19/07 Sun
I found a phonics sheet that was available on the EnchantedLearning.com website. The sheet comprised 20 pictures (diamond, kazoo, king, lollipop, koala, kite, leaf, killer whale, ladder, key, lion, gingerbread man, lamp, globe, keyboard, kitten, anchor, ladybird, kettle, kangaroo). The sheet was not very nicely presented. It had a title thus: Circle 10 Words that Start with ‘K’: EnchantedLearning.com. This should have been removed in the copying since it mixes upper and lower case. It is superfluous here since the instruction is repeated underneath, albeit with ‘K’ still in the upper case. There is a space for the child’s name.

I know that the sheet was once used as a phonics sheet by a colleague of mine. Educationally, I was unhappy with it for several reasons. Primarily it only presented one way of practising initial letter k and was concerned with spelling rather than phonics. It included a kitten that looked large enough to be a cat and I think that this could have been confusing for some children, causing them perhaps to visualise ‘kat’.

Secondly, I did not feel that it assured a successful outcome for the children. I feel that the activity was too contrived, which resulted in the use of obscure words just to find ten that started with ‘k’. I feel that ‘kazoo’ is a very obscure word and many children may not know it. Initially I myself was unsure as to whether or not the word was spelled ‘kazoo’ or ‘gazoo’. Furthermore, it took me a long while to figure out what the marine mammal was, since I thought of it as an orca rather than a killer whale. Keyboard could also be construed as piano. Hence I feel that the children could have quite rapidly identified some of the k-words, but would have been frustrated trying to figure out the last ones.

Finally, I do not know how it would have fitted in with the rest of a learning programme, and it felt too much like a test of ‘k’ and an activity for an activity’s sake. Had the children known all the k-pictures, it would not have taken them very long to circle them, so this would not have been good for child management, unless it was also to have been a colouring activity.

I think we have to avoid giving children activities just for activity's sake, and the above sheet highlights that we must be aware of the child's continual development and sustained motivation. It may have been more useful to use 5 words beginning with ‘k’ and have five beginning with ‘g’ to see if the children could hear the difference between the voiced and unvoiced consonant pair.

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Subject: Multisensory Teaching Methods


Author:
Seán Kenny
[Edit]
Date Posted: 13:12:09 12/03/06 Sun
Hi Forum, I am a teacher first but my background is in Psychology too. I thought I would share this bit of information with fellow participants of this course.
Multisensory Teaching Methods
"Multisensory teaching methods are a valuable strategy to use with all children. In addition, studies from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development have shown that for children with difficulties learning to read, a Multisensory teaching method is the most effective teaching method.
This is especially crucial for dyslexic children or for children with other learning difficulties. But what does 'a Multisensory teaching method' mean?
Using a multi-sensory teaching approach means helping a child to learn through more than one of the senses. Most teaching in schools is done using either sight (visual sensations) or hearing (auditory sensations). The child's sight is used in reading information, looking at diagrams or pictures, or reading what is on the teacher's board. The sense of hearing is used in listening to what the teacher says. (A dyslexic child may experience difficulties with either or both of these senses. The child's vision may be affected by difficulties with tracking, visual processing or seeing the words become fuzzy or move around. The child's hearing may be satisfactory on a hearing test, but auditory memory or auditory processing may be weak.) The answer is to involve the use of more of each child's senses, especially the use of touch and movement (kinetic). This will give the child's brain tactile and kinetic memories to hang on to, as well as the visual and auditory ones.
The Multisensory approach is used to include children with different learning needs and prevent the development of reading difficulties. Multisensory learning relies on kinaesthetic, auditory and visual training wheels to help build the reading circuits in the brain.
Multisensory learning is a teaching method that provides implicit clues to the subconscious. When children are learning implicitly, they pick up the rules of letter/sound relationships without conscious effort. This reduces the workload on conscious processing during decoding, effectively making learning to read easier. For example, with colour-coded letters, not only is it easier for children to learn how to sound out new words, it is also enjoyable. The generation effect is another form of implicit learning that makes learning easier and fun through the creation of a new word. The generation effect often referred to as learning by doing, improves learning when something is actually created. For example, children are more likely to learn a new word when they have actually constructed it for themselves with moveable letters. The Multisensory approach becomes the training wheels for acquiring new reading skills. Once these skills have been acquired, the Multisensory support will no longer be needed, and the training wheels can come off.

Four Multisensory Reminders
To create a truly Multisensory learning experience, have four reminders for each letter sound, as well as the sound itself:

1. A visual memory of the letter sound with a picture on an alphabet chart.

2. An auditory (hearing) memory of the sound.

3. A kinaesthetic memory of the letter sound action/movement.

4. A tactile experience of the letter, e.g. sandpaper cut-out, plasticine or clay letters.

As a Multisensory technique, an alphabet chart gives the children the opportunity to:

Memorize the picture with the sound at the start, and to say the sound out loud.
Seeing the letter next to a key picture helps the children to create a strong visual memory of:
1. the letter shape,

2. the sound, and

3. the picture clue.

1. 'Visual memory' A Visual Memory Using an Alphabet

A visual memory is a mental picture that our brain keeps of something. When that thing is mentioned, we are able to bring up that picture, and adapt that picture as we learn more about the thing.

If you hear or read the word' camel', a picture of a camel, however inaccurate, will probably float into ones mind, depending on how much of a 'visual thinker' one is. One may be able to produce a rough sketch of the camel (or one may be too embarrassed to do so!). Say these words to oneself one at a time and see if any pictures or memories come into your mind as you say them:

Remember to teach the children to say the sound of the letter and to leave the name of the letter for later. Check that they say the sound in a short, clipped way.

2. An Auditory Memory of Each Sound
Encourage the children to say each sound out loud. When we say a sound out loud, our brain hears that sound and retains a memory of it. We call this an auditory memory.

If a friend gives you directions to find your way - 'Turn left at the end of the road, then second right, then left at the school' - it is much easier to remember the directions if you repeat them out loud back to your friend. Your brain remembers hearing what you yourself said and you will find that memory coming back into your head as you walk or drive along. The directions are much easier to remember than if you had simply heard your friend say them.

'Auditory memory'
An auditory memory is a memory of something we have heard. When we hear ourselves say a sound, it leaves us with an especially strong memory which we can recall later. Children learn to associate this sound with a letter they see If you show children three or four sound cards: you can then ask them to point to the one which says" n ", making one sound. When they have chosen the correct sound, ask them all to say the sound out loud."

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Replies:
Subject: multi-sensory activities


Author:
Sue Maddox
[Edit]
Date Posted: 05:16:04 04/20/06 Thu
There are many resources that can be used for the tactile and kinaesthetic approach. For example; plastic/magnetic/wooden letters, salt, sand or rice trays, sky writing, pipe cleaners - in fact anything that can be manipulated into letter shapes,

One of the favourite activities of the children I work with and is highly recommended is called STILE. There are activities for pre-reading up to the older more advanced pupil. For the purpose of this assignment I will use the pre-reading tray. It involves a tray containing eight tiles. The tiles are numbered 1-8 or written in red, these are the questions, the activities are in corresponding books, with pictures or words numbered in black - these are the answers. The child matches the number on the question tile to the answer in the book and places it onto the black answer number in the tray number side up. When all tiles are in the tray, it is closed and turned over. If all the answers are correct, there will be a pattern which matches one at the top of the page the child has been working on. This is an excellent visual way of recognising and matching for any phonics.
Very successful!

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Replies:
Subject: Synthetic phonics tutor required


Author:
Bonita Thomson (Hopeful)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 06:22:30 06/18/07 Mon
I am looking for a synthetic phonics tutor for an adult I have recently assessed. He is 51 and his literacy is very low. His ability is as high as many students in higher education. He has tried on and off over the years on various programmes but I think synthetic phonics could be the answer. He lives near Waltham Abbey(NE)London and doesn't drive. If you know anyone, please email me - but please, I don't want to be inundated with any other kinds of therapy - just someone with a good knowledge in synthetic phonics. Many thanks.

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Subject: Actions for Jolly Phonics


Author:
Dorothy Jones
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:54:02 06/04/07 Mon
The Jolly Phonics programme is a popular programme used in many of the schools that I visit, however, I feel that some of the actions used for the sounds cards are a little dated.For the sound /y/ for instance I would probably use a yo-yo like movement rather than spooning yogurt which is the suggested action. Not many children will identify with the castanets used for the /ck/ sound and simply clapping would be more suitable. What does anyone else think? Busy teachers are often happy to follow the prescibed actions outlined, but some of these may confuse children.

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Subject: teaching EFL adult learners


Author:
Alison Sae-Sue
[Edit]
Date Posted: 19:48:24 10/16/06 Mon
Could anyone recommend materials to use with adult EFL learners who are at the Beginner level and need intensive help with basic reading? Advice on reading programmes and on line materials would be greatly appreciated. The students are mainly young Asian learners.

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Replies:
Subject: CVC reading/spelling activities


Author:
Dorothy Jones
[Edit]
Date Posted: 03:05:50 05/07/07 Mon
Thought I would share a few activities that can help children with reading and spelling regular CVC words.

Matching cards - matching a CVC word with its corresponding picture.Starting with 6 cards - 3 CVC words (lower case letters) and 3 corresponding pictures.The adult mixes up the cards and the child has to match them.

The Fish Game -Consonants are written in red on table-tennis balls and vowels are written in green. The balls are floated on a water tray.The adult asks the child to catch the letter that makes a particular sound - the mmm etc.The child catches this letter in their net.The adult asks the child to catch another red ball and then a green ball.The child is asked if they can make a word using these letters.They keep a list of all the words they make.


Word Boxes - Copy CVC words on to card and cut up.Place up to 10 words in a small box (between 3 and 5 words for children who will find this number too difficult.Child is given Box 1 to take home.Parents sit with their child and listen to them blending sounds and saying the words.When they have secured their recognition of these words they are given Box 2 and so on.Children should take home boxes they have already had in order to secure recognition of known CVC’s and prevent other children feeling that they are working at a lower level.

Reading Games - On card copy a track for children to follow - (If children have a particular interest, try and incorporate this for instance - a race track, a snake, a maze etc.)Write CVC’s randomly within sections of the track.Child has to put their counter on START and throw a dice.It may be better to cover numbers 4,5 and 6 with paper and write numbers 1,2 and 3 again.Child lands on a word and has to blend sounds and then say the word. Move on one space if correct.If child finds this difficult, the adult helps and encourages the child to have another go.Reach the finish line and pick up your trophy (sticker).

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Subject: Using a combination of reading strategies


Author:
Dorothy Jones
[Edit]
Date Posted: 02:41:34 05/07/07 Mon
I am a specialist teacher working for the Special Educational Needs Advisory and Assessment Team (SENAAT)and am responsible for advising SENCO's and teacher's how best to meet the needs of pupils with cognition and learning difficulties.I work in 16 schools both primary and secondary.

I have found that it is often difficult for pupils to decide when a particular reading strategy will be appropriate and many rely on the strategy they feel more confident using. Recently, I was asked to assess a Year 3 pupil who was a good reader, but had difficulty with spelling. When tested, his reading age although age appropriate was laboured; he sounded out every word, even known sight words losing the meaning of the text and gaining little pleasure from reading (1.1.13). Sounding out each individual sound in a word prevented him from learning other combinations of letter sounds. Another bright Year 2 pupil presented me with his individual reader containing only pictures, his verbal skills were excellent and he was able to retell the story in detail, however, he was unable to put his knowledge and understanding of reading strategies into practice because of the inappropriate level of reader (1.1.15).

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Subject: not just a reading problem


Author:
Tina
[Edit]
Date Posted: 08:21:55 12/25/06 Mon
We must remember that learning how to read doesn't mean that all the other problems or difficulties connected with dyslexia will go away. Other issues like organisation and short term memory, for example, would still remain.

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Replies:
Subject: Too many languages


Author:
Preethi.K.Nair
[Edit]
Date Posted: 23:19:53 12/04/06 Mon
Children who speak one or more languages at home and are then taught at least two other foreign languages at school of which they have no prior knowledge and maybe are of no use to them in the future, are prone to reading and spelling problems. There should be a clause in the academic system whereby children with learning differences maybe exempted from learning so many languages or given the choice to learn what they need to help them, instead of causing them further frustration.

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Replies:
Subject: Hearing loss


Author:
Soad Shahin
[Edit]
Date Posted: 13:15:06 01/22/07 Mon
Hi all
I would like to share with all of you another little story.
Last year I met a beautiful 6 years old girl. She came to the Egyptian dyslexia association to make assessment; because her older sister is dyslexic and her mother was worried about her. We make the assessment in the association using a computer CD that contains arabic games.My daughter was thhe one making the assessment The girl looked perfect, but when she put the ear phones to make the assessment she appeared annoyed from the voice. When I revised her report I found it as if she didn't hear anything. I asked her mother to check her ears. .After a weak the mother came to thank me because the Doctor found fluid inside her ears as a result of frequently infection. He put her on medication and said she might need to insert tubes, but she was getting better taking the medicine. Assessment showed that she is dyslexic. As we know, dyslexia has been frequently associated with hearing loss caused by ear infection.

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Subject: Golden Rule


Author:
soad shahin
[Edit]
Date Posted: 10:28:07 01/08/07 Mon
Hi all
I would like to share something with you very interesting to all of us.I work with different dyslexic children in the Egyption Dyslexia Association just for help,Cairo,Egpt.I
was teaching to a 7 years old dyslexic boy last year. Reading with him was a part of my job. Each time we used to read a little story together. First time I asked him to read he appeared fearful and stressed putting his hand on his tummy, but as soon as I told him that I'm going to pronounce to him any unknown word to he became pleased, released and cheerful. I've noticed after a few lessons that using the Golden rule built in him self confidence. Every time he asked me to start the lesson by reading....!This year his mother told me that she is reading with him using the way I explained to her "the Golden rule". She also said that he likes reading so much now, reads confidently and became more interested in the book. I was so glad hearing that. Do any of you have any experience with that?

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Subject: Jolly phonics


Author:
Tina
[Edit]
Date Posted: 12:12:20 12/24/06 Sun
A young kindergarten teacher working with 4-5 year olds using jolly phonics observed that she couldn't tell if there were any dyslexic children in her class. Suffice it to say, if a multisensory method of teaching and learning is used from the very early years, it may well minimize or even eliminate reading difficulties in later years.

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Subject: Keeping Track


Author:
Lorraine
[Edit]
Date Posted: 03:45:29 11/27/06 Mon
I work with Jolly Phonics and because there are worksheets to help the children I find it an advantage to keep all the work involved with Jolly Phonics in a folder. What I have found is that the children who have a folder can take it home and proudly show their parents the progress they are achieving. I have also had mums saying to me that their children are starting to read signs when they are shopping or going along in the car. The children also find Jolly Phonics fun.

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Subject: The Student Reading Wall


Author:
Manzor L. Jaien
[Edit]
Date Posted: 23:53:30 11/15/06 Wed
A wonderful tool for quickly improving reading ability in students is to make a “Student Reading Wall”. This is so easy to implement that it can be done after 5 minutes of instruction with a teacher assistant. This can help students to memorize at least 5 words per week, especially students who are suffering from varying degrees of learning difficulties such as dyslexia.
The Student Reading Wall contains sight words and long words that need to be remembered by children through their visual memory.

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Subject: Bed time story


Author:
Mhd Malki
[Edit]
Date Posted: 07:34:09 11/11/06 Sat
I'll share you a trick my parent used to do with me during reading bed time stories. After two or three times reading a story that i liked, my dad often pretended to be tired or fall asleep at certain parts of the story and asked me to read the rest of the story for him. He was so smart that he interrupted me often to make sure that i'm reading not remebering the story by heart. Are parents now adays that good?

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Subject: Biligual


Author:
Mohammad Al-Qatami (77011)
[Edit]
Date Posted: 09:18:10 11/08/06 Wed
I would like to find out how to teach phonics to bilingual student (English-Arabic).

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