Phonemic awareness

amother

Mintgreen

Wed, Jan 03 2024, 10:40 pm

Reading specialist here.

Start by breaking down words. You say the word broken down and he has to guess what you're saying.
Then he has to break a word down into sounds.
Have him look in a mirror to see his mouth moving.
Have him tap the sounds on blocks.

Work on this until he masters it.

Once he's able to segment words, you can ask him "what's the first sound your mouth makes when you say the word cat?" And when he says /k/, you can say, that's right, cat starts with /k/. Looking in a mirror so he can see the shape of his mouth as he's forming the word can be really helpful.

For finding more words that start with the same sound, begin by giving him options. Walk him through segmenting the word, isolating the initial sound, and then seeing if it matches. It helps to have visual cues.

Some great phonemic awareness activities here https://fcrr.org/student-cente.....grade

The readbright program is also heavily based on phonemic awareness.

He needs to be able to segment onset and rime to understand rhyming.

amother

Slateblue

Wed, Jan 03 2024, 10:58 pm

Seablue is presenting the reality. It’s very, very hard to hear that your child had a learning difference. But don’t wait!!! The earlier you catch it, the better. Children with dyslexia learn many many coping mechanisms. It’s not about intellect. They will memorize the letters and sounds. They can get through kindergarten, 1st, 2nd grade and then it backfires because they have to be retaught. If you know at 5 that your child has this challenge, teach them correctly FOR THEM the first time. Set her up for success. Children who don’t have phonemic awareness need to be taught the sounds differently.
I am not a speech therapist, but I am the mother of a large family. And, I am the wife of a middle school rebbi who wishes the parents of his students would have gotten their kids help in kindergarten and early elementary. When a bar mitzvah age boy can’t read properly, it is emotionally so challenging. Never mind academically. They come to 7th and 8th grade and have to face reality that they need a special high school bec they can’t go to a regular Yeshiva if they can’t read. I have a household of kah excellent readers, and child #10 has dislexia. It’s overwhelming and there is definitely an element of denial. But, now we have the diagnosis and the reading programs and we are taking the steps to be on the way to reading BH.

amother

Camellia

Thu, Jan 04 2024, 12:03 am

When I read your OP, I was going to post that what you describe are red flags for dyslexia. I see others have already posted similarly.

OP it's really great that you noticed this so early. When ds was going into third grade, I read a book called Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz, which I highly recommend. It opened a world for me. She runs the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

Her basic premise is that evidence based programs are successful at teaching children with dyslexia to read. We started ds with a reading tutor who was certified in Orton Gillingham, and by the end of the school year he was reading. I should mention that ds had been getting speech therapy since he was 2, but the reading was a separate issue.

Just to give you and anyone else who needs it some chizuk. Today ds is in 12th grade and nearly a straight A student. He's also a bookworm and loves to read. Also worth mentioning that he hasn't had any services or IEPs since before high school.

mra01385

Thu, Jan 04 2024, 8:06 am

As a reading specialist I agree that phonemic awareness is the foundation to reading success. It’s being able to hear and recognize each individual sound in a spoken word.
One way to do that is to teach your child how the mouth and tongue moves with each sound, and that some sounds are heard through the throat called voiced sounds and some are quiet called non voiced sounds.

There is a fun program called lively letters that makes makes each individual letter into a funny character and they each have a cute story describing how each letter looks and how the mouth sounds out that letter using mnemonics. There is even a poem/song that goes with each letter as well.
You can check out their program at
https://readingwithtlc.com/ You can subscribe to their website for $9.99/mo or download their app to iPad. You can also purchase physical materials as well, though they are a bit pricey. They also have free training videos on how to implement this program. I highly recommend it.

Another highly recommended suggestion is to make it very multi-sensory. The more multi sensory the more there is a connection with the brain. You can use objects while sounding out each letter such as moving cotton balls, pennies, pom-poms etc. Have your child pick up each object or move it onto a square or circle or whatever shape while sounding out each letter sound. You can use Lego blocks and put each block together when sounding out each letter sound of a word either by first saying the whole word and breaking it down or saying each letter and building it. You can do the same thing using magna tiles. Another idea is to use a slinky while stretching out each vowel letter sound. Another idea is to put beads onto a pipe cleaner, or even shaping out the letter with play do or pipe cleaners or Wikki stix and saying the sounds while having the fingers go over each letter. You can also have your child paste objects that start with a letter onto a big outlined letter and have him say the sound each time he pastes on the object. If you want to get messy you can have your child draw letters and saying the sound using sand, salt, sugar shaving cream. You can even have him draw letters with dry erase markers have him trace his fingers over the letters while sound it out. You can also have him draw pictures of words that start with that letter or find pictures on a fun page or do a scavenger hunt etc. These are just some of the many things you can do to build phonemic awareness. You are building phonics skills as well when you are using the actual letters because you are showing how the alphabet letter is the symbol for the sound like a musical note is a symbol for a type of music beat. That’s how the sound is connected to the letters. This is why phonemic awareness and phonics skills are the foundation to learning to read.

I hope these many suggestions are helpful. Please pm me if you need or want more info.