Learning Letters and Sounds

One of the first things you need to know about teaching your child to read is this: multisensory learning is best. This means that when you engage several of the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) you allow your child to create a connection to information that may otherwise be difficult for him/her to access.

Photo by Krista Lord @ thismummaslife.com

This photograph of a child working with a salt tray not only illustrates my point, but gives you a concrete idea that you can use when working with your own child. (For more information on how to make this DIY Salt Tray and Alphabet Cards, see This Mumma's Life ). You also can use a baking pan or plastic container for the same purpose.

Tracing letters in salt or sugar, or even on a piece of felt, fur, bumpy plastic or carpet, is a great idea. However, it's better if your child uses one or two fingers to trace the letters and actually feels what he's touching rather than using a cotton tipped swab or other implement. Before tracing the letter, have your child say the name of the letter out loud, followed by a key word that helps him remember the correct sound that the letter makes. Finally, have your child trace the letter as he says its sound. Here is an example using the letter "a" with key word "apple":

It's recommended that your child traces his letters in cursive. Here's a brief explanation of why: The continuity of the single starting point for cursive and the ability to keep the finger moving helps a person learn the letter kinesthetically (learning through movement, using "muscle memory"). It's also best if your child concentrates on tracing lowercase rather than uppercase letters first.

Rather than working on the entire alphabet, you can work on a few letters at a time. Choose letters by observing which letters your child already knows (check if your child knows both the letter's name and the sound it makes). Making your own flashcards by finger painting with your child is a good tactile way to go through the alphabet together before tracing, checking your child's knowledge without having him feel like it's a test.

Photo by Krista Lord @ thismummaslife.com

Printing the letters on your flashcards is fine because your child is learning to read print rather than cursive. As I explained earlier, it can be beneficial to teach your child to trace the letters in cursive and not worry about printing. However, many students will have to print in school and you might want to work on it. Just remember that dyslexic students may have more trouble with reversing letters and forming the letters incorrectly when printing their letters.

If you want to teach your child to print before using cursive for tracing, you must make sure that your child is forming the letters correctly. Too many children have been taught to print by tracing words on worksheets. My own son ended up forming his letters wrong because his teachers did this. He starts his letters at the bottom and goes up. This is incorrect. You must start at the top and go down. Children can practice going from the top down by drawing "blades of grass" on a piece of paper, which are just straight lines starting from the top and going down into the ground. Here is a link to an excellent guide to teaching your child to print: Correct Letter Formation

You also want to be careful about how you model the sounds for your child. You don't want to say "'B' says 'buh'." You want to clip the sound so that he only hears the true sound of the letter B. Try saying the key word "bat." Then try to say it without the "at" added to it.

Unfortunately, many teachers and even Orton-Gillingham trained tutors make this mistake. The letter R is especially difficult. R does not say "er" or "ruh", it says "r" as in the word race without the "ace".

You can search YouTube for "Orton Gillingham" and find many good lessons modeled for you, but you may also see a few misleading ones. Here is a link that shows you how a tutor works with her students: Orton Gillingham 3 part drill This tutor does a good job although she is having the student trace the letter three times (when saying the letter's name, its key word, and its sound). It is best to trace only the letter when saying its sound.

If you have any questions or want to add anything to this discussion, please comment below. Thanks!

Where Do I Start?

If you're like me, as soon as you realized your child was having trouble reading you set out to do all that you could to help. But you didn't know where to start. 

Perhaps you immediately googled phrases like "reading difficulties" and "help your child read." Or your child's teacher may have recommended books, web sites, or computer software. Maybe she even encouraged tutoring or to have your child tested for dyslexia. 

This blog is dedicated to helping parents like you (as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, tutors and teachers) who want to help their children learn to read. Although my focus will be on dyslexic children (I am an Orton-Gillingham trained tutor), most of the information provided here should be useful for helping anyone (even adults) learn to read. 

When my son Nicholas was in first grade, his teacher told me that he wasn't learning to read as quickly as his classmates. She gave me several hand-outs about "struggling readers" that she thought might help. She explained that she'd been working with Nick using flashcards that she'd made for him. He seemed to be making progress at first, but then she realized that he had simply memorized the words and the order in which she was presenting them to him. Once she shuffled the deck, he was lost. 

My husband and I both love to read. We'd been reading to Nick ever since he was baby. His two older sisters (then in 4th and 7th grade) loved to read to him too. He'd been carrying books around and making up stories, pointing at the pictures from the time he could walk. I'd been teaching him to read just like I'd done with my other children, but it wasn't working. He had gone to preschool and done all kinds of creative play with the alphabet. Nick could sing the "alphabet song" with the best of them, but he still had trouble telling me each of the letters' names. I thought maybe it was a boy thing, since I knew that boys develop later than girls. I hoped it wasn't anything to worry about. But I had been concerned when his kindergarten teacher told me that Nick was the first child she'd ever taught who knew the sounds the letters made, but couldn't name them. When his first-grade teacher said he wasn't keeping up with his peers, I was really worried.

Although my husband Andy loves to read, he has often jokingly said that he might be slightly dyslexic. When he moved to Pittsburgh with his family in second-grade, the teachers told his mom that he couldn't read. They gave her flashcards that she reviewed with him every day. He also coped by memorizing lots of words and even entire reading passages that he would have to read in class. In the upper grades, he found out that he learned the subject matter better when he listened to classroom lectures without taking any notes. To this day, he still has trouble reading when he's tired. 

When I asked Nick's teacher if she thought Nick could be dyslexic, her answer surprised me. She said she was glad that I'd brought it up, because by law she could not bring it up herself. Teachers are not allowed to "diagnose" dyslexia. She then said yes, he might be dyslexic and I might want to have him tested. 

Unfortunately, the school system where I lived did not test children for dyslexia (unless absolutely driven to it by a parent waving the law in their face, but I'll talk about that at another time), so I wasn't sure what to do. (Testing for dyslexia can be extremely expensive, so if you're trying to figure out if your child is dyslexic, I recommend searching out several options before having him evaluated.) Nick's teacher told me about Scottish Rite, a masonic organization that provides free testing for dyslexic children. She also recommended that he repeat first grade, but I thought that would be a big mistake for him. Nick was big for his age and he was getting A's in class. He also was very perceptive and I knew that he would think that repeating a year was a punishment. 

Seven years ago, when my son was having reading difficulties, I would have loved to find a blog that focused on dyslexia. Even now, googling dyslexia still doesn't help me find what I was looking for then. I wanted information and I wanted it fast. I didn't want theories, I wanted help. I also didn't want to sign up for expensive courses or invest in costly software, at least not right away. I couldn't really afford the expense, so I needed to be reassured by other parents who had used those products first. I wished there were support groups for parents of dyslexic children, but I had trouble finding any at the time. Although more information has become available over the years, parents of dyslexic children still need a better personable source to turn to and that is what this blog aims to be.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think of all this. You can ask questions, tell me what you need to know about dyslexia, and share your experience, insights, and advice too. I'm here for you, ready and willing to listen and discuss.