Category: Spelling

Seven Steps to Help Your Beginning Reader

Dyslexia, Learning, Reading, Spelling

A child who can read is a child who can learn. And a child who can learn is a child who can succeed in school and in life.

Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling.

Margaret Spelling reminds us that learning to read is one of the foundations of life success. Learning to read can be challenging for young children. Many parents and volunteers wonder how the time they spend reading with children can be more productive. The following suggestions are aimed to help parents and volunteers make reading more fun and successful for beginning readers.

1. SET THE STAGE Use the title and cover picture to create enthusiasm for the story. Discuss the picture and how it relates to the title. Ask the reader ,”What do you think the book is going to be about?”

2. LOOK FOR CLUES If this is a phonics-based book, review the phonetic rule for the book. Often the rule is on the inside back cover of the book. Spend a moment with the child playing with the rule. Write the rule down and add sounds. For example, if the rule is long /a/. Write ___a___e and then fill in letters to make words: date, late, mate, kate. Let them have fun, don’t worry if it’s a real word or not, just enjoy the process.

3. WATCH OUT FOR BUMPS IN THE ROAD Scan the book for difficult words before you start reading. Write the words on index cards and read them for the child before you start reading. Pull out the card if the child has trouble reading the word in the text and read it to her again. Then let her read the sentence on her own. This process will help with reading fluency and increase the motivation and enjoyment of reading.

4. GREEN LIGHT, GO! Ask the child to start reading.

5. RED LIGHT, STOP TO CORRECT ERRORS When a child makes an error, break down the word into smaller parts. Ask him to identify the first sound, and then the vowel sound. If he doesn’t know either, give him the sound. If there is a rule, follow the sound with the rule. For example, magic E jumps over one letter to make a vowel say its alphabet name, so late has a long /a/sound. Remember, most beginning reader books have the rule in the back or front of the book.

6. YELLOW LIGHT, CAUTION! Prep for success. If the child has a repeating error, write it on an index card in large letters and show and read it to the student each time she makes that error. This builds sight word vocabulary.

7. WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? Use visual cues in the book as frames of reference to make sure the student understands what he reads. Question the reader, Why is this picture in the book? Ask comprehension questions such as: What do you think is going to happen next? Who is your favorite character, and why ?Was this a funny story? Why or why not?

Reading is a complex skill that requires strong visual, auditory and attention proficiency. Many times, beginning readers need more developmental time to acquire these skills.

Read the characteristics below and when one is true of your reader check                        all the boxes to the right of that item.

 Column A measures auditory processing skills. If your reader is weak in this skill, she is struggling to match the sound of the letter with the letter symbol.

Column B measures attention skills. Close attention to the details of the letter symbols is needed in order to learn to read.

Column C measures visual skills. The eye muscles need to work together to track the letter symbols on the page fluently. If the eyes are weak, reading will be challenging.

How to build Auditory Processing Skills

  • Help with phonics.
    • When students have trouble with auditory processing, they have difficulty knowing the sounds that go with each letter.
    • Therefore, they rely on their visual memory to read unfamiliar words. When students come to a word they have not memorized they will guess because they don’t know how to sound out a new word.
  • Help sound out new words.
    • Write down the new words used in a story and review them before reading.
    • Refer to the new words with the child while reading.
  • When a child is stumped and starts guessing:
    • Ask her for the vowel in the word and then the sound of the vowel, because it is usually the hardest part of the word.
    • If the child has not mastered a sound, pronounce that sound for her. This allows her to hear the proper sound and make an association between the letter and the sound.
    • Write the challenging word on a piece of paper. First ask for the vowel sound, then ask for the letters that come after the vowel. Write these down and have the child read it. Then ask for the letters before the vowel and write them on the word and have the child read the whole word.

How to build Attention Skills

  • Keep reading periods short. Readers who have trouble paying attention find it difficult sitting still while reading, and staying focused. This can cause them to rush and make careless errors such as skipping words and missing meaning.
    • Begin with 10-15 minute intervals and increase time as skills increase.
    • Slow the reader down.
    • Remind her to focus on the letters.
    • Remind her it’s not a race.
  • Get the reader involved
    • Help build meaning for the story and enjoyment for reading.
    • Look at the cover of the book and read the title.
    • Discuss the picture and how it relates to the title.
  • Keep attention as you read
    • Look at and discuss the picture on each page prior to reading the page.
    • Have the child point to and name the characters.
    • Ask questions about the characters.
      • Do they look happy?
      • Is he nice?
      • Do you know anyone who likes to do that?
  • Ask questions about the topic.
    • Have you ever done that?
    • Do you know anyone who has?
  • Ask questions about what the child thinks will happen next.
    • What do you thing is going to happen next?
    • Why do you think that is going to happen?
  • Create a focus chart
    • Divide the session into 5 minute intervals. At each interval, give the student 1-5 points for careful reading. (1 unfocused, 5 very focused)
    • Ask the student to rate himself or herself. This helps the reader learn about his/her reading behavior.

How to build Visual Processing Skills

  • Make sure the reader can see the text clearly. When students have trouble with visual processing, they have trouble recognizing fine differences in visual symbols like letters and numbers. This causes them to misread words that look alike.
    • If they have glasses make sure they are wearing them.
    • Begin with larger print books and avoid visually confusing texts.
  • Help focus the reader’s eyes
    • Use an index card to hold under the line being read.
    • When a student has difficulty with a word, use your fingers to isolate one letter at a time to help him read the whole word.
    • Make sure the child can tell you the name of the letter and then ask for the sound of the letter, then go back and help him put the letter into the word.
  • Teach new words.
    • Write the word in big print on a 3×5 card, or another piece of paper.
    • These words can be put in a file box to build the student’s sight-word vocabulary.
  • Help with reversals.
    • Fluent readers must be able to distinguish the visual difference in the letter symbols, such as P vs Q, B vs D, M vs W.
    • When students make reversal errors, write the letters out on index cards at the beginning of each reading session.
    • Have the student trace each letter to increase awareness of the proper formations.
    • Refer to the cards while reading.

Most Common Reading/Spelling rules

The Vowel

  • Most errors are due to the reader not knowing the sound of the vowel.
    • Review all vowel sounds and make sure the child knows his vowel sounds, both long and short sounds.
  • Often, a child does not remember what makes a vowel long or short. Here are the rules:
  • Short vowels need protection from other vowels. Every short vowel is followed by a consonant and there must be two consonants between vowels in two-syllable words.
    • At, it, hat, bat, nut, shut, hot, hut, long
    • Batting, hotter, hitting
  • Long vowel needs to be “tapped” by another vowel to say its alphabet name.
    • Magic “E”: its only purpose is to “tap” the vowel to remind him to say his long sound. The magic “E” can jump over only one letter.
      • Make, date, phone, bone
  • Two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.
    • Each vowel has a best friend who she like to walk with. The best friend “taps” the front vowel and /ea/: mean, dean, bean
    • tells her to say her alphabet name.
    • /ai/; bait, wait
    • /oa/: boat, moat
    • /ui/: suit, fruit
    • Exception: /i/’s best friend is the silent /gh/: night, sight, light

Silent letters

  • Silent letters come after short vowels, you can think of them as protection from the end of the word or from another vowel.
    • /ck/: sick, nick,
    • /dge/: fudge, judge
    • /tch/: switch, ditch

Blends

  • Blends can be challenging for beginning reader because there are more letters to visually process and the mouth movement is harder.
    • R blends: /tr/   /sr/ /cr/ /br/   /dr/
    • L blends: /bl/   /sl/ /cl/ /pl/
    • Triple blends: /str/

 

Bossy R’s

  • A /r/ after a vowel sound is so bossy he doesn’t let the vowel say its name.
    • /er/ /ir/ and /ur/ all say the sound of /r/: her, sir, hurt.
    • /ar/ says /r’s/ alphabet name: car, star, bar.
    • /or/ says same as the little word “or”: born, torn, sort.

There are many more rules, these are just some that often trip up beginning readers.

 

 

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Dysgraphia: Difficulty writing

Learning, Processing Speed, Spelling, Thinking Skills, Visual Processing, Writing

Dysgraphia refers to difficulty writing.  Most people with dysgraphia have a hard time holding a pencil or pen. The awkward pencil grip can make forming letters on a page challenging.  When a student with dysgraphia is asked to copy from the board, line up math problems, or write an essay he is at a real disadvantage compared to his peers who can easily write down information on a page.

Many parents and teachers don’t realize that dysgraphia is a learning disability that does not get better as the student gets older. Here are some of the signs to watch for:

  • Awkward pencil grip
  • Messy writing
  • Letter size is inconsistent
  • Presses hard on paper
  • Spacing is inconsistent
  • Letters are not anchored on the line
  • Tires easily
  • Omits words in sentence
  • Has trouble keeping track of an idea while writing
  • A large gap exists between verbal ability to communicate and written ability to communicate.

What can be done to help a dysgraphic student?

Build fine motor skills for writing

    • The amount of effort it takes students to write makes the whole writing process laborious. The frustrating part for the students is that they have the ideas but it’s too much work to communicate them
    • I recommend the Retrain the Brain program along with Handwriting Without Tears.
    • An occupational therapist has additional tools that can be used to build the hand muscles needed for fluent writing.
    • Vision Therapy, if visual tracking is an issue.

Organize language and writing skills.

      • Educational specialists or tutors can help with this
      • The writing skills that a student with this profile needs to learn includes: pre-writing skills to help him organize his ideas before he writes and editing skills.
      • Use Speech to Text software like Dragon 

Use mind maps or advanced organizers

    • Graphic organizers  are great tools.
 In other words, we want to take the grand ideas that the student has and get them onto paper.
 This process alone will alleviate a lot of stress on the student.
    • Once the ideas are on paper, they can be numbered in the order the student wants to present them in his final paper.

Here is a great video that explains dysgraphia

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Will My Child Always Be Dyslexic?

Dyslexia, Learning, Learning differences, Reading, Spelling, Visual Processing


Research is ongoing regarding the neuro-pathways of our brains and how they can change with time and intervention, so you will get different answers to this question depending on whom you ask. Can a dyslexic student learn to read… YES!  As someone who has remediated learning differences for over 20 years, I can confidently tell you that dyslexic children can be taught to read and spell. To provide the right assistance to your child you need to discover your child’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses.  Then you can more easily find the correct intervention that taps into the part of the brain that needs to be developed.

Brain imaging is being used to highlight the parts of the brain that are active when we do certain types of activities. Research has shown that different areas are active in the “dyslexic” brain than in the typical brain when reading.  What does this mean for “fixing” the dyslexic brain? The theory is that we should help the dyslexic readers build the same brain pathways as the typical reader, so that when reading, the two types of brains use the same pathways.

The most widely accepted definition of dyslexia as accepted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, as well as the International Dyslexia Association, states that:

  • Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin.
  • It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.
  • These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.
  • Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

What this means is that a dyslexic child’s intelligence is above his reading level and that the reason for the difference is due to difficulty sounding out and manipulating sounds. What I know from my years of teaching reading is that there can be more than a phonological deficit making reading challenging for children. Therefore to teach a child to read you need to step back to get a bigger picture of the child’s learning profile.

If we are going to use the term dyslexia to define all students who have a reading disorder it is helpful to consider the “types” of dyslexia. The goal of understanding “types” of dyslexia is identifying the underlying issues that are making reading difficult for your child.

  • Phonological/ Auditory Dyslexia:  These students can’t sound out nonsense words, they have weak sound/symbol associations. It is difficult for this student to “hear”, or discriminate, the difference in sounds. “Hat” and “bat” may sound the same. If not identified early, this type of student will learn to read by building a large sight word vocabulary.
  • Visual Dyslexia: Visual processing issues make it hard for this type of student to  discriminate between visual symbols (letters and numbers) quickly and accurately.  Letter reversals are common as are substituting one word for another. “Home” can be read as “House”.
  • Double-Deficit Dyslexia: The connection between the verbal (auditory) portion of the brain and the visual portion of the brain is weak. Tests of rapid naming pick up this visual/language loop.

Once you know the areas of weakness your child has you can select an intervention program that is designed to build the neuro-pathways your child needs to develop in order to activate the parts of the brain that make reading easy. I believe that the unusual brain pattern of dyslexics may offer more benefits and advantages than we previously believed and more conversation is taking place about the benefits of dyslexia.

So perhaps the real issue isn’t whether your child will always be dyslexic, but rather how you can help your dyslexic child to flourish in his or her educational environment and learn to appreciate his/her own learning style. Learning to view dyslexia not as a negative challenge, but rather as a predisposed mental wiring can help teachers, parents and children relax into the realization that different doesn’t mean wrong. As research continues to investigate the brain and how we learn, I am sure we will continue to develop new attitudes and teaching methods to help all types of learners access information easily.

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The Frustrated Learner

ADHD, Executive Functioning, Learning, Learning differences, Math, Processing Speed, Reading, Spelling, Thinking Skills, Visual Processing, Writing

The Frustration Profile article on my blog, which is about students with high verbal skills and weak motor skills, has gotten more hits and comments than any other blog article I have written.  What I’m realizing is that all students who have learning issues or have any significant discrepancies in their learning profile, tend to become frustrated with academic tasks.

When I explain learning differences to parents I often talk about the feeling a smart student has when there are holes in his learning profile. It is like sending a child out on a field that has bear traps; you know the kind, where the hole is covered with grass so you can’t see it but when you step on it you fall in. These students can do some things really well but other tasks are hard. This type of student is constantly surprised by what he can and can’t do. This uneven cognitive foundation and constant disappointment causes children to become insecure about their abilities. So, basically all children with learning disabilities are set up to become frustrated.

The question is: how do you help these students? This is where testing and evaluations become critical.  Students who have significant strengths along with significant weaknesses are always going to have areas that trip them up. In order for these students to feel secure they need a stable cognitive baseline that they understand. This is what Mel Levine describes as “the demystification process”. The demystification process means taking the mystery out of how the brain works. The process requires you to shine a light on the child’s strengths and weaknesses. It would no longer be a mystery, for example, why math homework is difficult for a student with visual processing difficulties. You explain to him, “ You are very smart, you can do all this math in your head because of your strong working memory ability.  However, because you have difficulty with visual motor tasks, it is hard for you to write the work down. This does not mean you are dumb. It means you have an area that we need to develop”.  Then you create a plan to develop that area of weakness. This is important information for the child to understand. He needs to know that you can be smart and still struggle in school. Let me say that another way, you can struggle in school, and still be smart! How many ways can I say this so that parents, students and teachers understand? Struggling in school does not equal low intelligence.

The important factor in all of this is developing a plan that doesn’t act as a Band-Aid for areas of weakness.  The solution requires developing a plan that remediates, or builds the areas of weakness so there is no longer a significant difference between the strengths and weaknesses. If there is an area that is still weak, once remediation has been done, that is when you start with accommodations.  In other words, for the student with visual processing issues:

First: Build his visual skills.

Second: Build his fine motor skills (writing).

Last: If after you’ve done the remediation of those two areas and there are still weaknesses, and the child is now in fourth-grade, build typing skills. Then once typing skills are learned, teach them dictation skills with a voice-to-text program.

Are you noticing that this is a process?

The process requires:

  1. Identification of strengths and weaknesses.
  2. Demystification of the learning profile for parents, students and teachers.
  3. Remediation of the areas of weakness.
  4. Accommodations for any weaknesses that cannot be remediated.

When a student is frustrated it’s time to take a closer look at his or her learning profile. Frustration is the symptom; you need to find the cause. Then, you identify the best intervention possible that targets the individual student’s areas of need.

I believe every student with an average or above IQ can learn to read, write and do math. It is all about finding the right program that matches the child’s need.

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Learning and Stress Can Be Related

Behavioral Regulation, Executive Functioning, Learning, Math, Processing Speed, Reading, Spelling, Thinking Skills

Stress is a major factor for many students these days. Students who have a learning disability have to work harder than their typical learning peers just to keep up in the classroom. When a child has to struggle to pay attention, read, write or do math their stress levels can increase with the tasks. There is a term called “Learned Helplessness”. Learned helplessness refers to children who have failed repeatedly and now they give up without even trying. In other words, they learn to be helpless to avoid another failure.

What can be done to help these students? The first thing to do is identify the area that is causing the struggle. Next, develop a plan to build the needed skills and a strategy to help gain control over the topic (reading, writing, math). When children understand why they are struggling in school it is easier for them to change their thoughts from “I’m dumb and I can’t do anything” to “I have an auditory processing difficulty that makes reading hard for me and I can get a tutor to help me.” The information the child gains about his learning strengths and weaknesses allows him to change his thoughts from a global sense of failure to a specific area of weakness that can be strengthened. Helping children change their feelings from out of control to in control is important to the learning process.

Many students who have struggled for a long time or have a specific area of stress can benefit from the emWave Desktop, a computer program that teaches breathing techniques to decrease stress and anxiety.  I have found it very helpful in my practice with students with math, writing or test anxiety. It is simple to use. The student is hooked to the computer and a game is played that demonstrates the child’s heart rate. There is a range of heart rate that is called coherence, this range indicates that the child is calm and in control. Learning breathing techniques to help a student maintain coherence even when in stressful situations can help the child maintain focus and perform better on tests and assignments.

Here is a Youtube video of the program being used with some gifted children.

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Spelling Tips

Executive Functioning, Learning, Reading, Spelling, Thinking Skills

My child’s reading fluency has really improved! When can I expect to see an improvement in his spelling?

This recent question from a parent about her fifth-grade son is an excellent one, and is relevant to many students. Therefore, I’d like to share our answer.

In researching the relationship between reading fluency and spelling skills, we found that reading instruction can improve spelling to a certain degree. But by the upper elementary grades, students must master specific skills in addition to reading fluency to become good spellers. Students need additional spelling instruction because reading fluency and spelling call upon different abilities. Reading fluency measures a student’s ability to read accurately and quickly, while spelling demands that the student correctly hear, combine, and record a word’s sounds with the proper letters. On top of this, the student must understand and apply the spelling rules of our language, in which many words are not written exactly as they sound.

Fluent readers have learned the rules of phonics (the sounds each letter symbol makes) and can apply these rules when reading. Additionally, fluent readers can quickly scan a page and recognize each word. Good reading is based on more fundamental skills: phonetic awareness, phonetic memory and rapid naming.

Just like fluent readers, good spellers have mastered the rules of phonics (they know their sounds) and remember those rules when spelling a word. Approximately 80% of words in our language follow phonetic rules. However, the remaining words do not “play fair” phonetically and require knowledge of the exceptions. So good spelling requires even more skills than good reading does: phonetic awareness, phonetic memory, visual processing, visual discrimination, visual memory, and graphomotor (writing) skill.

So how are reading fluency and spelling connected? Research has found that teaching spelling improves reading. The phonetic instruction which is also used to teach spelling is now proven to be the best way to teach reading. However, spelling instruction at the fifth-grade level and above requires more than phonemic awareness. In the K-1 years, spelling can be taught using phonics, but fifth-grade spelling rules require several more complex skills. Louisa Moats (2005/06) has broken down spelling tasks by grade level:

Kindergarten: Teach phonemic awareness, letter sounds and names.

First Grade: Teach consonants and multiple spellings of vowel sounds.

First-Third Grade: Teach irregular words, such as homonyms (to, too, two).

Second Grade: Teach more complex spelling irregularities, such as spelling according to position of the sound in the word (where in the word to use ou or ow; when to use ge or dge for a /j/ sound); and common endings such as -s, -ed,and -ing.

Third Grade: Teach multi-syllable words, including rules of syllabication, (where to break up a word into syllables), compound word(such as cowboy), accent and pronunciation shifts (schwa) when the short u sound is used instead of the original vowel sound (man to human, or the /a/ sound in adapt).

Fourth Grade: Teach Latin-based prefixes, suffixes and roots, such as /pre/ (before) + /nat/ (to be born) = prenatal (before birth).

Fifth Grade: Teach the meanings and spelling of more common Latin-based words. Organize word study around a common root word, once prefixes and suffixes are recognized.

The fifth-grade student who prompted this question has been taught many of these concepts. However, some of the skills required to spell at the fifth-grade level may not yet be automatic for him. While he has learned to recognize and decode words, and so to read well, spelling demands not just recognizing but producing the correct letters in a word. In order to spell a word right, a student must correctly recall its sounds, generate the symbols for those sounds, and apply the spelling rules to make sure the sounds are, in this word, correctly represented by those symbols. Reading offers visual cues that help in decoding, but spelling requires the student himself to produce the auditory, visual and written forms of a word.

So spelling demands more skills than reading does, and therefore requires its own instruction. What to do in the case of this delightful fifth-grader who has improved so much in his reading? He has the phonetic awareness, memory and rapid naming necessary for reading fluently. We now know that he is ready to go beyond the one- and two-syllable spelling rules. He should benefit from the fourth- and fifth-grade curriculum recommended by Louisa Moats. Since we at the K&M Center already teach the prefixes, suffixes and root words to improve vocabulary, we include the Lousia Moats program as spelling instruction for our older students.

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