Teaching A, Apple, "ah"

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

I was just wondering how teaching A, Apple, “ah” will affect my son if i am using phonographix. Having that type of system seems to help him when he needs it.

I understand that once we get through the basics of PG he won’t need it but I read in one of Rod’s post that it was a really bad strategy. That is how it is he is taught in class so it is almost impossible to avoid!

Thanks
K.

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/28/2002 - 1:54 AM

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I don’t see this as being a problem at all. Your son is being taught the name of the letter, naming a picture to illustrate the sound, and saying the sound itself. Of course, I hope he is saying \a, the beginning sound of apple, rather than “ah” which is closer to the beginning sound in “about.”

Identifying individual sounds in spoken words is the essence of phonemic awareness. Phonics instruction begins when the child can identify letters that represent those sounds. The type of instruction your child is receiving is very helpful for the second step here.

Grace at http://www.spellangtree.org

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/01/2002 - 6:53 PM

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I use the Wilson Reading Program with my Learning Disabled students. Each lesson begins with the students repeating “a apple /a/” etc. Having a word to associate to the sound has helped it stick in their heads, like lyrics to a song. While reading independently, if a student gets stuck on a word, I can hear him saying the phrase to himself in order to remember the sound. I love it!

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 11/02/2002 - 11:18 PM

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Good and bad. Certainly learning the sound as it relates to a real word is good; phonics is a tool to read real words and this needs to be stressed.

However, when I was teaching very young children, I found that they really, really wanted to read hieroglyphics. I would say “A, aaaah, beginning sound of ‘apple’ “, and they would happily say “A says apple”, omitting the sound and trying forcefully to make one symbol mean one whole word.

Well, historically this makes sense as all early writing systems are hieroglyphic in nature and phonetic writing developed slowly over thousands of years. So it is not an easy concept to learn all at once! Especially not for a small child.

On the other hand we know what giving in to the easy way and teaching hieroglyphically does; it leads to the disasters of “look-say” and “whole-language”, so that isn’t the solution.

I insist that the child repeat just the sound, not sound-and-word, to make it clear that the *sound* is the focus. I also use a number of key words, apple and ant and alligator for example, so the child slowly gets it into his head that one letter is involved in more than one word.

I also have the child read many words with me, honic words built from known sounds and high-frequency words from graded books, and model sounding out until the child can do it on his own. This introduces the sound in every position in aword and in many different words so that it becomes clear that apple is only one example for A.

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