Well, this has been quite a week. On Tuesday, I had the wonderful news that the Nessy educational company had posted a link to this site on their facebook page, telling their followers to check out my blog as it was ‘filled with information and teaching tips’. Wow! My blog has now had over 500 views so far this week and I was so pleased that Nessy were happy to be associated with this little project I am doing, especially as this is all new to me and is still a work in progress. Apologies to those who have already heard this a few times this week, but I was rather excited!
Have a look at my blog of 28th August detailing the story behind Nessy and its founder Mike Jones – it is very inspiring. Go to Talking about Nessy etc
In this short video clip, Mike Jones the founder of Nessy and Director of Bristol Dyslexia Centre mentions his early struggles.
Although this blog/site was set up to help those with dyslexia, the basics of learning to read and write apply to everyone and so information on this site is applicable to most learners. However, the dyslexic learner usually needs to be taught more explicitly for them to be able to understand and process the learning. Teaching for the dyslexic individual needs to be detailed, structured, cumulative and multisensory. As many individuals are not diagnosed with dyslexia or other learning differences immediately, it makes sense to use these strategies for as many children as possible.
Under the offers detailed below, Nessy are offering their ‘Chimp Fu’ app free until 28th September to help learners chunk words into syllables. Awareness of syllables is really helpful in reading and spelling. If a learner can chunk a word into syllables, especially longer words, then they can have more success in reading accurately, as they can concentrate on one syllable at a time and then blend all the syllables together. Did you realise that when we clap the syllables, we are actually clapping on the vowel phoneme? Try it out. Vowels are so important in reading and spelling and they are differentiated from the rest of the alphabet because they are all ‘open’ sounds, whereas consonants have the airflow at least partially obstructed. Try and say the vowels and you will notice that your chin moves as the mouth opens to voice the sound without any obstruction. Each syllable contains a vowel and although the letter ‘y’ is usually referred to as a consonant, it is in fact a semi vowel, as it can sometimes make a vowel phoneme e.g. the long /ī/ sound in cry and shy, the short /ĭ/ phoneme in gym and long /ē/ as in funny and silly* and is counted as a vowel in these circumstances. A good knowledge of syllables can help a learner spell longer words, by splitting the word into chunks and tackling each part at a time, knowing that each syllable has to contain a vowel in some form. As well as single vowels, there are ‘vowel digraphs’, which are two letters making one sound and begin with a vowel e.g. er, or, oi, ow, ue and vowel trigraphs (three letters) e.g. igh, ear, air.
*Note: When writing about phonemes, I use the lines // to show that I am referring to a sound. The breve symbol is used above the letter to show if I am referring to a short, weak vowel sound e.g. /ă/ as in cat and the macron symbol to demonstrate a long, strong vowel sound e.g. /ā/ as in late. These symbols all refer to the phoneme i.e. what you hear and not the letters used to make that sound.
Letters should be referred to by their letter name from an early age. It is recommended the letter names are introduced when digraphs are taught as the letters are then no longer making just one sound, so need to be identified by their names for consistency. It is in fact a curriculum objective for year 1 to name the letters of the alphabet and refer to the letters by their name. This does not mean that learners should never say the sound (phoneme), but they need to be aware of the difference between the name of the letter and the phoneme, using the correct term each time. If a child is spelling a word or an adult is saying the letters to a learner, then it is important that the letter names are used consistently from year 1. Especially, as it is very easy for adults to accidentally add a ‘schwa’ when saying letters to spell a word e.g. they may say ‘muh’ instead of ‘mmmmm’ and ‘nuh’ instead of ‘nnnnn’ and learners will copy this, which will hinder their ability to blend phonemes together to read a word. Also, it will start to confuse the learner if they are told to write the short vowel sound /ă/ and /ĭ/ in a word such as ‘rain’ because they are not hearing any of those sounds in the word ‘rain’, only the long /ā/ sound made by the digraph ‘ai’. See the video on my page First stages of reading and spelling for a video demonstrating how to say the pure phonemes when sounding out a word, but use letter names when saying which letters are needed to spell a word. For example we should be saying that together the letter names ‘a’ and ‘i’ can make the phoneme /ā/ as they are no longer making individual sounds.
The dyslexic learner who does not progress well in the normal classroom may require an additional personalised dyslexic programme, but many dyslexic individuals will be able to follow the class phonics teaching with daily multisensory, structured, cumulative phonics programmes taught explicitly.
Look below to see what I have found free this week!
Have a good week! PJ
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, It’s learning to dance in the rain
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For Learners: Nessy’s Chimp Fu app is now free until the 28th September! Have fun finding how to chunk words into syllables. Go to https://www.nessy.com/uk/apps/
For Parents: Check out Eventbrite online events from Dyslexia Scotland, who are offering free online sessions entitled ‘Tips for Helping Spelling at Home’ on Thursday 11th November at 2pm, ‘Tips for Helping Reading at Home’ on Thursday, 25th November at 2pm and ‘Tips for Helping Writing at Home’ on 9th December at 2pm. Go to: https://www.dyslexiascotland.org.uk/news/3-online-workshops-parents-support-literacy-home
For Educators: Join the facebook group ‘The Phonics Queen’ or subscribe to her Youtube channel for free. This last week Natalie (The Phonics Queen) has posted videos of sample lessons for teaching the early stages of Phase 2 including lots of ideas for Phase 1.
Help your child learn to read, write and spell 