Transcript

We know that children learning to read in an alphabetic language such as English need to learn the letter sound correspondences and how to blend these letter sounds together to read words. So, students who are struggling to learn to read need explicit instruction in the sounds the letters make. They need particular attention paid to the vowel sounds, especially the short vowel sounds. So for a Special Education teacher or parent trying to teach a student or their child letter sound correspondences, most phonics programs start with four or five different consonants, often a continuous consonant sound. Sounds that can be stretched such as /m/ or /s/, rather than stop sounds such as /d/ or /t/ because it's easier for children to say the sounds that you stretch and then they start with one or two vowels. Once the child has consolidated these sounds and isolation, then you can start teaching them how to blend them together to make words. It's fun to make words that are real and it's also fun to make words that are not real. So, this gives the student the opportunity to blend sounds together, in different ways, and these words can be known as Martian words and you can play different games with them, and talk about. Then, connecting what you've sounded out to the meaning of words as well.