I coordinate volunteers for an adult literacy program, and a tutor has encountered a student who has difficulty recognizing any words that begin with ‘w’s.’ The tutor says the student can recognize these words (after some degree of struggling) within context. But, when they attempt to practice sight words, she consistently cannot recognize “what,” “where” “was,” “win,” etc… Are there any other strategies I could recommend to her, aside from simply practicing sight word drills?
Thanks for your responses!
Re: W's
Thank you very much for your response, Victoria. I thought about the ‘wh’ pairing you mention—that she might be having specific difficulty with this phoneme, but when the tutor said she had difficulty with was, were, etc…I wasn’t for sure. The exercises you recommended sound promising, and we do have several phonics workbooks/games/activities. Thanks, once more.
Rebecca
I never practice sight word drills, and consider them useless. Tell me, are the approaches being used helping this student? OK, here’s something different, well-known and scientifically proven to work.
First, make sure the student is writing w acceptably, left to right, the best form being semi-cursive down-up-down-up.
Then have the student write a line of w’s (or two or three if she can write easily), saying *out loud* the SOUND (not the name!) w-w-w-w, *each and every time* the letter is written.
Then get any good phonics workbook series and have the student do the recognition/identification pages with w — the pages where all the pictures of things that start with w are circled and all those that don’t are x’d out, and the pages where you write the initial letter of the words identifying several pictures including several with w. Support the student through this but *don’t* feed her the answers; have her say the words to herself and feel for the rounded lips and listen for the “w-w” sound. She may also find it helpful to look at herself in a mirror as she says the words and look for the rounded lips as well as feel and hear them. She can also put her fingers beside her mouth and feel the shape.
Then write a bunch of simple words with initial w and show her how to sound them out — wwwww – eeeeeee, wwwwww —iiiiiiiiiii–llllllllll, etcetera (be careful not to start with the aw sound as in water, wall, wash — that is a second sound group and should be looked at separately)
wh is actually a slightly different phoneme, an unvoiced form of w, and should be taught as a package, like sh and ch and th — a special sound. You can do the same practices as above with wh.
She may be having trouble seeing the wh as a digraph, and so specific practice as above will clarify this.
Afte an hour or two of work, she should have this down; maybe more if her LD’s are serious, but usually an hour or two is enough. Then as she reads, if she stalls on a w word, remind her to look at the first letter and say the sound. That is usually enough. If not, review a few times.