decoding words

Have him sound out just two-sound words for awhile. They can be nonsense words. If he makes a mistake, ask him “what is the first sound in that word?”. If he gets the first sound but then makes a mistake on the second sound, ask him “what is the second sound in that word?”.

Once he is solid on two-sound words, have him blend two sounds at a time within three-sound words. For example, for “jam” have him say /j/ and /a/ and then blend them into /ja/ before going on to sound out /m/, and then have him blend /ja/ and /m/ into /jam/.

If the student continues to have problems, even with this approach, I would suspect more than just vision problems — most likely sensory integration problems, and perhaps auditory processing problems also.

Nancy

Another thing you could do is have him run his finger down below the word from left to right. If he is not so good at this you can model this or actually take a pencil and run it under the word in a left to right fashion.

Either he hasn’t got the left to right pattern down fully or he has a visual problem (ie more in the visual training area).

—des

Hi,

I really don’t see this as a problem with either directionality or vision, although both of those problems may exist and may even be making the concept of learning to read difficult for your first grader.

However, the specific problem is not knowing what the concept of blending is really all about. He doesn’t understand that there’s a word being sounded out. In other words, he’s at the level of “say three sounds, then a word,” but hasn’t yet made the mental leap to realizing that the “word” is determined by the three sounds.

You can do several things. One is to simply not worry for a while because almost all second graders can blend, and in time he will be able to also. However, this is generally an unacceptable option in this country, even though it probably makes the most sense.

The second is to work on phonemic awareness activities. He needs to be able to pick out things that start with the /m/ sound, for instance, when looking around the room, or when hearing several words like “mop,” “top,” “man” and “bat.” If he can’t yet do this, he’s not really aware of sounds in words, which is one reason he’s not connecting sound..sound..sound to “word.”

The third thing to do is to work on segmenting words visually and orally simultaneously in a process called word building (which is actually word deconstruction, or segmenting.) The easiest way to describe word building is to ask you to read Reading Reflex, by McGuinness, which every reading teacher should do anyway, honestly.

Essentially though, all you do is show the child a picture clue of the word, place the three letters (sounds) in front of him, and ask what the first sound in “jam” is. If you can get him to say /j/, ask him which letter is the /j/ sound, and have him place it on the first of three lines you have drawn on a paper, board, or whatever. Continue on with /a/ and /m/. Then have him repeat the three sounds as you point at them and say “jam.”

In doing this, you are seeking to make the connection between sound…sound…sound and “word” for him and enable him to make the cognitive breakthrough that he needs to make.

And finally, if word building isn’t working, see if you can establish the concept of blending without using print. Tell him you are going to say the sounds of one of two words. Tell him the two words are “man” and “jet.” Then say /j/…/e/…/t/ (sounds, not letter names, obviously) and ask him which word it was. It would be helpful, if he has trouble remembering his options, to place a picture of a man and a jet in front of him. If he begins to figure out what you want, make the task tougher, by only varying two sounds (man, ten) and finally one sound (man, mat) (mat, mitt) (fan, fat.) At first, when he appears to “get it,” he may just be going by the vowel sound, for instance.

Basically, he needs to make this cognitive breakthrough, it’s a developmental process, and it’s not related to his vision or any problems he might have with directionality (though he may indeed have such problems.)

A sidenote on vision. I teach reading as a private practice and I’m finding that almost every kid that I see with a reading problem has a vision problem, and this boy may also. I’m speculating here, but it’s possible that when kids are visually confused, they just don’t attend to print when they’re being read to by conscientious parents, etc., and so they never make the connection between letters and sounds.

I think there is often more going on than just vision, but I also think that vision problems can cause many of these reading delays.

I’m also finding that the type of vision problem I’m referring to here run heavily in families. For instance, if that boy continues to have reading trouble, and he has four siblings, it’s quite likely that one or two of the siblings will present the same way, and that so did one of the parents.

Hope this helps….Rod

Keep working on the directionality; if he is looking at the m while you are saying j, he will continue to be mixed up!

Also, try direct teaching by modelling. Write the word “jam” in very large letters with black marker on a file card. Have him trace the letters, being very specific about directionality as he traces (top to bottom and left to right, period; round start letters such as a are counterclockwise, which finishes up on the right as it should). As he traces the j, say “j-j-j-j” and have him say it too, same for each letter. Then go over the word slowly, then a tiny bit faster, then a tiny bit faster, pointing at the letter as you say the sound: “jjjjjjjj - aaaaaaaa - mmmmm”, “jjj-aaa-mmm”, “jj-aa-mm”, “jjaamm”. Have him imitate you, saying the sounds slowly and then a bit faster and then a bit faster, and pointing at the letter with you. On about the fifth speed-up you’re saying the word stretched out, and then you say it still slowly but normally, running your finger left to-right across the card “JAM!”

Have him work one word over and over this way for as long as you can keep him at it, tracing letters with you, sounding out with you, copying letters on his own on a whiteboard (watch that directionality! Help direct his hand as necessary!), sounding out from his own copy, etc.
Then the next day, work another word, say for example “mat”. Then the third day, another word, for example “man”.
Then have him work all three words — sound out “jam” together, trace it, copy it; then “mat”, then “man”. Then see if he can use the skill to recognize which of the three words is which; if he confused man and mat, go over the sounding again and again until he hears the difference (stress it to the point of the ridiculous)

It will take time, but this kind of direct teaching gets across the idea that sounds and symbols are related the best I know. Try it for a week or two and tell us if you see any signs of a light flashing on above his head.

Look into Looking Glass Spelling, level 1 to help with left to right tracking and sound-symbol blending into words website www.gwhizresources.com. Also, Glass Analysis (the basis for LGS) may be helpful.
Fern

I agree with the concept of teaching the child to blend, working from left to right. I do think, though, that ‘jam’ is not the best choice to start blending practice. It’s much easier to start with a two-letter word that begins with a vowel, then move on to three-letter words that begin with continuants such as m, n, l, etc. To illustrate:

“Let’s sayd the word ‘am’. Stretch the word like you would a rubber band until you hear the sounds. (aaa-mmm). How many sounds do you hear?”

Then I’d have the child write the letters that represent those sounds. Writing is a powerful tool in cementing concepts into the mind. After the child has written his choices, provide immediate feedback, either praising him for what he’s done correctly or helping him make corrections. One can then move to the words ‘an’ and ‘at’. Once he understands these, move on to words like ‘fan’, ‘man’, ‘Nan’, ‘ran’, ‘van’, ‘Sam’, ‘fat’, ‘mat’, ‘sat’, ‘rat’ because each of these beginning sounds can be stretched.

After the child has written these words, they can be transferred to word cards for him to read.

The next step is to provide practice in blending beginning consonants into vowels just as was done in the ancient syllabary on the Hornbook (ba, be, bi, bo, bu). This helps them overcome the problems that often occur with stop consonants preceding fowel sounds and helps them develop left to right directionality. I have a file of a very rudimentary stile game that I can email to anyone who is interested. I’ve seen children master blending in a single weekend when I’ve explained the concept to parents and they worked with their children at home. I can be reached through my website, http://www.spellangtree.org or directly at [email protected]. Grace