VOWEL SOUNDS

VOWEL SOUNDS

If your child is having trouble reading - even in teen age years - chances are they are having trouble with auditory discrimination. That is, they probably have trouble discriminating  vowel sounds - that is they confuse the sounds that the letters represent. This can happen to children (and adults) even though they have no diagnosable hearing problem.

There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Five of these are vowels. The vowels are the letters : a,e,i,o,u. 

The rest are called consonants. Every word in the English language has a vowel in it, except for words such as 'fly' and 'by' where the 'y' takes the place of a vowel.

We have to remember that writing is a code for spoken language. So it is important to be able to hear the different sounds, or 'phonemes' that the various letters represent.

It is best to look at the short vowel sounds first. That is:

• 'a' as in 'cat'
• 'e' as in 'egg'
• 'i' as in  'fit'
• 'o' as in 'orange' 
• 'u' as in hut.

Many students confuse:

• the short 'a' with 'e' and 'u' 
• the short 'e' with 'a' and 'i'
• the short 'i' with 'e'
• the short 'u' with 'a' 

What do I do if I think my child might have trouble with discrimination of vowel sounds?

Make up some flash cards. You can print out cards and laminate them or just make simple cardboard, handwritten ones like the ones below.

 Keep these in a snack size, ziplock bag. (I find these invaluable for keeping reading resources.)

 Present these to your child randomly,one at a time, once or twice a day until they know the short sounds of the vowels. Then try it a bit faster - see how fast they can go.

In reading it is not just a matter of knowing sounds but of cementing them into the brain so it becomes automatic. 

Once your child can deal with this without many mistakes, introduce 3 more sets of cards with vowel sounds.

 Keep them in the ziplock bag and present them randomly once a day. (With my own child I always found it is best to avoid weekends unless she wanted to do her letters. It is really important not to make reading a punishment.)

Even when your child seems good at this, it is  good to repeat it every week or so for a while. With every practice we are slowly changing the brain.

Avoid criticising your child and praise them when they are correct. As far as possible this has to be a positive experience. If your child links reading with anxiety or negative experiences, it is going to make it very difficult to keep them working.

If this just seems too simple, don't worry. We are building a really firm foundation for their reading which will serve them for the rest of their lives. It is all right to take your time.  Next week we will begin working with simple words.

PS If your child wants to work on words after they have done this don't hold them back.

 

 

Learning the Alphabet

Most of the children I see, who are nine years of age and under, and have a reading disability, do not know the alphabet without making mistakes. None of them can write it in order correctly. Some of them do not even know all the names of the letters, and for some reason, which is quite interesting, a lot of them get confused with the "l,m,n,o,p" section. 

I print out an alphabet in black and white in the font of Verdana size 88.

 I add a few extra letters at the end since there is room on the paper.

I cut the letters up and laminate them.

I keep these letters in zip-lock snack bags. I usually have a few on hand in my kit with some extra letters so students can make their names.


At the beginning of each weekly lesson I ask the students to put the letters in alphabetical order. Most of them sing the alphabet song to the tune of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. Most of them have to start the song right from the beginning a number of times.

Even if children do not want to sing the song, they seem to have more success if they recite the alphabet out loud.

I also give them a packet of letters to take home and a coloured alphabet that I have laminated.

They can use this to work on their own at home, placing the black and white letters on the coloured ones, matching them up.

( The "q" on this alphabet needs a tail added to it with a black marker to make it less confusing for the students.)

One 9 year old student had considerable trouble with "l,m,n,o,p" so his homework was to write this out 5 times on 4 nights that week. When he returned for his weekly lesson he was able to make the whole alphabet.

 Ideally, students with reading disabilities would work on homework each night, but it is really important not to make students hate reading and writing even more than they do. 

So if you have a child or teenager who is struggling to read, check that they know their alphabet. If they don't know it perfectly practice it 'gently' until they do. 

Repetition is really important to the child with a reading disability. 

But remember, a child cannot learn effectively if they are anxious or bored.