phonics » Special Education and Learning Differences

This teaching strategy is brought to us by Virginia of Andover, MA. She is a Speech/Language Pathologist for students in Early Learning through 2nd grade. Virgina’s teaching technique is to engage her students in a creative adventure to put together a story of the sound or letter they are targeting in their lesson.

Her project: Creating Books for Super Articulation.

Using Target Sounds for the lesson, the students name a stuffed animal or puppet as the main character, such as Ricky Raccoon for ‘r’ words. Using a picture of Ricky along with others chosen by the students they build a book of Ricky’s likes, dislikes, activities, habitat, friends, etc. Each page starts with “Ricky the Raccoon…” This sense of adventure and creating is great for motivating articulation practice of /r/, as well as practicing sentence structures, asking questions making it a multisensory experience. Ricky and the book go home for practice with the student’s parents. Huge interest & success!

Her students really enjoyed this project and have a new one entitled “Lily the Leopard.” This book will incorporate not only /l/, but the vowelized /r/ combinations needed… ar, er, ir, or, ur.

Learning Objectives:

Practice of learned skills including: phonemic awareness, placement, production; syntax: organization/formulation of verbal expression; benefit of model/imitation of therapist and parents; and independent experience. The results are increased sound production and intelligibility from single words to connected speech! Great motivating lessons for articulation practice, intelligibility, and building confidence as an effective communicator.

Materials:

Pictures, construction paper, glue, laminate, markers/computer printed labels and sentence starters, and homework sheet, as well as a small puppet or stuffed animal that can travel home with the book for a week’s practice.

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Brought to you by We Are Teachers partnership with PCI Education’s Teacher Grant Asks: http://www.weareteachers.com/ideas/partnerask/teachingidea?app=17630&grantId=75

by Kristi Lindsay

My four year old, Jadon, struggled with writing lower case “b” and “d”. “Which way does ‘b’ go and which was does ‘d’ go?” he asked. He can say their names, knows their sounds, and can match them up with their uppercase letters. But, sometimes, he gets the two confused. bread

Have you ever noticed how similar some of the lowercase letters are? Look at “b” and “d” or “p” and “q”. Or how about lower case “h”, “n”, and “m”? As a teacher, I remember how my struggling readers had a hard time identifying these letters. They could say the letters’ names, sounds, and even write them in isolation, but often got them confused when reading or used the wrong one by accident as a letter reversal when writing.

I figured there had to be a way to help him remember which letter is “b” and which is the “d”. Then it hit me: bread and drink! I remembered an afternoon talk show episode that discussed a simple way to identify which “bread” and which “drink” were ours at a formal table setting. “Bread on the left and drink on the right,” said the host as she held up her left hand with pointer and thumb in the shape of a circle and three other fingers together pointing up like the shape of a “b” for “bread.” Her right hand was the opposite in the shape of a “d” for “drink.” While the simple hand gestures helped me identify my bread and drink, I also realized the “b” and “d” could help my son.

Try it: make a “b” with your left hand and “d” with your right hand. They are in alphabetical order when held up in front of you! Silly and simple? Yes, but since sharing the “b” and “d” hand trick with Jadon, I often see him holding up his hands and saying “a, b, c, d,” accenting the “b” and “d” with his hands.

Struggling readers can’t sound out words if they can’t recognize the letters in the words. Providing these little reminders gives them tools to be better readers. If your child struggles to identify letters, come up with silly visuals to help him or her remember them. It can be as easy or as silly as “b for bread and d for drink!”

Emergent Readers and Struggling Readers Have Fun Learning and Discover Reading Success

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It is an engaging game, made in two levels, that helps emerging readers and struggling readers become familiar with words that follow a consonant-vowel-consonant (c-v-c) pattern. The reproducible worksheets binder can be used in conjunction with the board game, as a stand-alone program or supplement to another reading program. Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It Software offers picture representations of words as well as words without pictures for visual learners and students with developmental disabilities to reinforce the foundation and skills needed to begin reading and strengthen the reading skill process.

Playing the interactive board game or software game helps struggling learners develop phonological awareness. Students begin to understand individual sounds apart from words, how sounds form words, how words begin and end, and how to recognize parts and patterns of words. Once students recognize the parts and patterns of words and associate them with the letters of the alphabet, they begin to equate sounds with symbols. This is the beginning of reading. By playing these games, students improve their phonological awareness and learn to recognize, identify, spell, and rhyme c-v-c words with the most common letter patterns.

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It 1 & 2 both consist of a game board and 150 draw cards. The game board features 28 squares. Each square has an icon to represent one of the possible tasks to complete during the game. As a student lands on a square, he or she selects a draw card from the appropriate stack and completes the designated task: saying a word, rhyming a word, or spelling a word. Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It 2 progresses in difficulty from the first board game by using c-v-c-c and c-c-v-c short vowel word patterns.

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It is appropriate for a wide variety of classrooms, including specialized reading programs, language arts, resource, inclusive, and ESL classrooms. These easy-to-play games help students learn to read c-v-c, c-v-c-c and c-c-v-c short vowel word pattern words and establish the foundation or reinforcement of reading skills for emergent readers, struggling readers, and students with specials needs and learning differences.

To encourage parental involvement and reinforcement of emerging reading skills at home, reproducible activities and a parent letter are included. These take-home activities provide an easy way for students to practice saying, rhyming, and spelling words.

Product Developed and Authored by Rosie Simms

Help Struggling Learners and Students with Learning Differences be Successful Readers

Research conducted by a National Reading Panel created by Congress found the best way to teach children to read is “through systematic and explicit manipulation of phonemes in words in a balanced reading program… Knowledge of phonemes, as part of the beginning literacy program, is critical in early reading development.”¹

Once children have developed phonemic awareness, they can link letters and sounds together. Then, they can move on to phonics instruction and the next steps in a reading program.

But what about students with learning differences? How can students who struggle with phonemic awareness move to the next step? They need more time, more practice, and more reinforcement. Do you hold up the whole class for your struggling learners, or do you move on and hope that they catch up?

Although the use of computers is relatively new to classrooms, the National Reading Panel states that this technology has great promise in the teaching of reading. Students who need extra practice with a concept like phonemic awareness can use a computer program like Build & Read software to strengthen their skills.

Because using the computer is so appealing to children of all ages, it can be a reward activity that your struggling students can choose to do on their own time. Since the whole class does not have to be engaged in this activity, a student who is struggling can practice at his or her own pace without an audience.

Visual and auditory learners benefit from using computer programs as independent practice. Students who need to hear the sounds of the phonemes can use a program like Build & Read with headphones. He or she can get extra reinforcement without disturbing others in the classroom.

¹ The above quoted information comes from this website:
http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/Publications/textversionvideo.htm

Article by Kristina M. Swann

Special Education and Learning Differences

Real Teachers-Real Strategies 5: Creating Books for Articulation

Struggling Reader Series: Identifying Letters

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It

Emergent Readers and Struggling Readers Have Fun Learning and Discover Reading Success

Technology for Phonemic Awareness

Help Struggling Learners and Students with Learning Differences be Successful Readers