My 5 year old kindergartener is struggling with letter identification and learning to read. Teacher says he is VERY inconsistent in letter name recognition but does much better with identifying letter’s sound. He is already verbalizing frustration. He can sound words out when doing basic reading but cannot spell words on paper, even when supplied with letter’s name. He is my 3rd child and I recognize something is not clicking. His teacher is starting down the testing path, which is fine but I want to be able to help him at home. . Any advice and/or suggestions for what I can be doing at home??
Re: Need Some Help!
Hi. I am a special education teacher who has developed a spelling series for kids with learning disabilities. It’s called Looking Glass Spelling. It was designed for slightly older kids on very low reading levels, but it addresses sound-symbol-letter associations with a multisensory strategy. It’s very easy to use in a classroom and/or at home. In fact, much of it can be done by the student without the teacher, so it wouldn’t be a burden for you to do it or for the teacher to use it in class. You can preview it on my website at www.gwhizresources.com. It’s a little expensive for a parent, so if your interested and the school won’t buy it, call me, and we can work something out.
Fern
Hi Helen,
While sounds are most important for reading (except vowels, which sometimes say their names, of course), writing sometimes requires that we name the letters themselves. Such as, when writing letters that someone else says to write. Otherwise, in spelling a *word* that someone says (or we say to ourselves), we go back to the sounds associated with the symbols.
First, make sure he is totally connected to the sound/symbol relationship. You seem to think that when he *sees* the letters that he knows their respective sounds. Then, I believe you are working on orally segmenting words into sounds. (No letters attached) Can he do that? If not, try some Elkonian. Someone (Sue perhaps) posted some on-line resources for this) or there is a book entitled “Road to the Code” by Dr. Benita Blachman (maybe two n’s.) She’s one of the pioneer researchers in phonemic awareness and has a nice book for 4-5-6 year olds with teaching resources and lesson plans. It is very, very good and easy to follow.