Phonemic Awareness vs. Phoneme/Grapheme question

Phonemic awareness is independent of writing; you just have to be able to hear and work with the speech sounds. So that high score says he can hear the soudns just fine - but bring in the “graphemes” — the letters to stand for the sounds — and the trouble starts.

Ok, thanks for putting into laywoman’s terms. He seems to be a slow, but accurate reader of below grade level material . He also can spell much much better orally than written. And his written spelling , while very often incorrect, is phonetic in nature. We are proceeding with Orton based tutoring, but would this discrepancy suggest that additional writing work needs to be done. ?

Not necessarily- the Orton tutoring should address this thoroughly- it is what it is designed for.

Robin

On the test I give for phonemic awareness phoneme grapheem correspondence actually is a sub-test of phonemic awarness. But it doesn’t involve the student writing anytings, just reading letters and letter combinations and sounding them out. So actually it is part of phonemeic awareness as far as I see it. An 8 still says to me he has some minor trouble in that area that could benefit from help. But the discrepancy says the biggest problem may be in that one particular area of phonemeic awareness related to written print and how it sounds. Orton Gillingham should help that, also you can practice spelling and reading using things such as sand and shaving cream (your tutor should be familiar with that). If he has trouble with handwriting itself you mght want an occupational therapist to evaluate.

Thanks - that makes sense to me. I did have him evaluated by an OT who did think OT would help him make writing more automatic. (plus his grip is lousy) We’ll do it if we can fit into his schedule. But surprisingly, his actualhandwriting doesn’t look that bad - it must just be alot of work for him to write , just like its alot of work for him to read.