So you have a student on the dyslexic spectrum ...

A lack of phonemic awareness and a difficulty with phonological processing are seen by many in this field as being the primary cause of dyslexia. The symptoms include a poor internal representation of language sounds (i.e., poor phonological/phonemic awareness), problems with storage and retrieval of words in the vocabulary and a poor acquisition of the grammatical structures of language. These will cause the learner to have difficulty with the alphabetic stage of literacy and the indirect route to word reading (i.e. the development of phonic-based word attack skills).

SESS, Cork, Ireland  downloaded 5th June 2017

Beginning to Read Skills and Ideas ...

SESS .... from Cork, Ireland.... (the number 1 for each paragraph is as it is on the original page)

and my ruminations ...

Remember that:

1. The single most important activity for children to build the knowledge and skills they will require for reading appears to be being read to by an adult.

05.06.17 The family have a key role here.  I have always encouraged parents to read to their children, but I don't feel I have stressed its importance ... 

26.08.17  Encourage families to read in their preferred language .... reading doesn't only have to be in English for our ESOL students.

1. Children learn a great deal about both the nature and function of print through thoughtful interactions with adults that involve print in the environment and in books. 

05.06.17 Again, this is something I have always done, but perhaps not with the same stress.  At the beginning of this year, as usual, I made some class books, using pictures of the children.   I remember feeling surprised (and disappointed) that the children didn't chose these books to read from the library.  I read them to the children to encourage them, but it made no difference.  Recently however, these books have made an appearance - at library reading times ... and the children have brought them to me to read to the class ... What was it that effected this change ?

26.08.17  Again, reading doesn't only have to be in English for our ESOL students.

Also, this has been the greatest advantage of our wonderful volunteers and split classes ....

1. Language experience activities and the use of big books are excellent means of establishing print awareness. 

05.06.17 At the beginning of this year, as usual, I chose the topics while we were in our very early stages of learning about writing.  Then, as the children became more confident, could shape letters accurately and made correct sound-letter connections I left the choice of topic to the children writing ... I expect this to encourage and motivate the children to enjoy writing for themselves, rather than as something they do for the teacher... that intrinsic motivation.  I have had some fantastic sentences from the children ... about fire engines and never have the children struggled to come up with an idea ... I hope this will continue for all the children !

26.08.17 I have recently (due to time constraints) encouraged the children to draw their picture (based on our topic or big book) and then I have written their sentence(s) underneath, all on big paper (not in their books). The advantage of this is that the children's language can be extended and they can 'write' more because the forming of letters is taken away.  The downside is that the lovely progression of their writing learning journey isn't as obvious in their books .... oh to have more time!

1. Children recognise a variety of environmental print that they encounter day to day. This can contribute to reading success if a child has begun to learn about the individual letters. 

05.06.17  Start learning about letters from day 1 !!  This year I decided against the beautiful letters turned into shapes eg the butterfly for b.  I had read somewhere that the shape may be a distraction for the children - knowing that dyslexic children were very aware of images, I wondered if this distracted them ???  So this year, we still cut out the shapes, but drew on the shape pictures that began with that letter sound .... not so pretty, but hopefully more helpful ??

26.08.17  The challenge for me now, is that my newbies are at the beginning stages and my 'leaders' are at a completely different stage, due to time constraints, I struggle to run an effective writing lesson for one group, let alone two !  I may be able to have my TA for longer ... this will help !

1. Learning to accurately recognise and discriminate shapes of letters rapidly is a difficult process requiring support and encouragement. 

05.06.17  Encourage, encourage, encourage .... fun and games ... this year I am trialling an idea I found on-line ... having a picture of the student and their name below with individual letters they can sequence ...Still in the process of making these ... nearly there tho!

26.08.17  My buzz recently was due to one of my 'spectrum' students blowing me away with her story writing.  I had thought that as she could relate to the image, but not tell me the sound during the end of term assessment, she would struggle to write phonetically - luckily I was WRONG !!! Yippee!! She blew me away with her sentence - writing the initial sounds for each unknown word.  I wish I had more time to ensure more opportunity for our class to write more!  

1. Some children have difficulty conceiving of spoken language as consisting of individual words. The concept of ‘word’ should be developed through exposure to written text and through direct instruction. Children should also be helped to appreciate the relationship between the lengths of spoken and written words. 

05.06.17  Yippee, this is something I introduced more explicitly from the start of this year.  Having been asked the question by an incredibly talented colleague and also a friend, combined with knowledge from an other incredibly talented colleague and friend ... teaching must be explicit... So unless we teach children what a word is .... how will they know ??

26.08.17  It is interesting to see how beginning readers confuse letters and words ... assuming they are aware of these in the first place !

1. Activities designed to develop young children’s awareness of words, syllables and phonemes can significantly increase their later success in learning to read and write. The impact of phonemic awareness training on reading acquisition is especially strong when phonemes are taught together with the letters by which they are represented.
   

05.06.17  Switched onto Spelling and colleagues who had used this previously taught me that this is so important ... children must make the link between their knowledge of sounds and letters.  This is something I have also pushed in my class this year.  As usual, I had the children point to the letter rather than the image on the alphabet charts ... I had previously noticed that children tended to point to the image ... I believe pointing to the image, distracts the child from making the phoneme - letter links.

26.08.17   I am so lucky !!  My school are kindly sending me on a course run by Louise Dempsey  ... I am looking forward to this!   Also, I found by accident these documents from TKI.  
This term, I have been creating class books for each letter we are learning.  The children tell me words beginning with that letter and when we have several words, the children come up and circle the 'letter sound' in each word (like Switched onto Spelling).  I decided to put these into books, based on their letter shape.  I also started with one letter (after we had learnt a few) elkonin boxes to help show them the sounds.  This is still early days.

Early encouragement of printing is both a way of developing letter recognition skills and of enabling children to write independently.

05.06.17  This is a challenge for me ... I have always allowed the children to write even if they are at the making squiggles stage believing it enabled children to write independently.  However, when children are aware of letters, surely they are also becoming aware that they haven't written letters ... so this year I have made more focus on correctly shaping the letters and knowing the letter sounds rather than having the children write in their books daily, writing squiggles ...This was also due to a lack of class writing time, due to a daily phonics program that requires cross-grouping throughout the junior syndicate and a lack of a TA during our writing program.

26.08.17 As I have said before, I would like to have more of this ... I am continually rethinking how I can fit everything into my programme effectively.  We spent time correctly shaping our letters, writing sentence times, when we can transfer this knowledge is challenging to find!

my highlighting ...

from Strategies for the Mainstream Teacher - Ages Pre-reading to 7  downloaded 5th June 2017



05.06.17  In summary, it is encouraging to observe that I am creating opportunities for the children to develop these skills.   Now I have three new children, the challenge will be to ensure they too have the opportunity to learn these skills, I hope to have my 'established' children help with the teaching.  

26.08.17 These children, I am proud to say, have moved onto their next classroom.   My class dynamics have changed again, the joy and challenge of reception teaching !  I am now considering more of the play in my class ... to allow me the time to work effectively with my delightful dots with their hugely varying levels and learning styles.