I am a first year sped teacher and I have a student who is identified as being cognitively delayed. He is 8 years old and in 2nd grade. He started out this year not knowing all of the alphabet and sounds but he has since mastered that. So he knows all of the sounds now. (has trouble with vowels sometimes). Now we are working on reading and spelling 3 letter words. If I have him spell a word he can do it just fine. Then we go back and I have him read the words he spelled and he says he can’t read them. I have him touch each letter and say the sound and he does that just fine. Then I have him try to put the sounds together to make a word and he shuts down and gets frustrated. I am so confused. I don’t know what else to try. I have tried the Wilson reading with him and I’m currently trying the Phono-graphix method. Does anyone have any suggestions??
Nicole,
Good for you for trying to help this child with effective methods! But let me ask you a couple of things. What is his cognitive level? What is his level of language development? He should be at a five year old language level to successfully read. I think PG can be used with a younger child than Wilson, so you have made a good choice. I think a cognitively delayed child will need many more repitions than an average child to master anything. So see if he had the readiness skills in place, and then just work at each skill until he masters it. I’d personally add some extra multi-sensory work (tracing on a gel board, writing in color on a white board, etc.) to increase his ability to remember.
Janis