Phonemes are sounds of the English language. Each of the 27 letters  has one or more phonemes, and some phonemes come from more than one letter. For example, the s in its and is are different sounds; the sound of the s in is sounds like a zzzz. The letter a has many sounds: and, fate, father, and around all sound different.

 

Some of the phonemes that are made up of more than one letter include sh, oa (goat), igh (high), etc. An excellent book that I read years ago on this is Why Our Children can't Read and What We Can Do About It by Diane McGuiness. You can find it at  http://www.amazon.com/Children-Cant-Read-What-About/dp/0684853566.

 

 

There are only 44 sounds in the English language, a manageable number. So, one of the easiest means of teaching reading is to teach using phonemes. The first step is to play with sounds without using letters. You can have fun teaching the sounds by playing games like I Spy With My Little Eye... something that begins with the sound ssss. Use a limited number of objects to play this with, or cards with pictures like Spot It! Make sure the student knows this is a guessing game, so that if a wrong answer is given, there is no penalty.

 

Once the student knows about sounds, see if she can identify both sounds in a two sound word like if. This skill is called segmenting. Practice until the student gets all two sound words correct and then challenge with 3 sound words. Once this is mastered, continue to add one more sound at a time.

 

Blending is the ability to put sounds together to make a word, an auditory activity. This is different than decoding which requires looking at words; but decoding requires the ability to blend as well.

 

To start, gather pictures of a dog, a cat, and a mouse, and show them to the student, identifying the target words. You ask the student to guess what word you are saying when you say the word really slowly. Then say "d" "oooooooo" "g", is it dog, or cat or mouse? Most children will guess the dog. If not, remove the picture of the animal that was incorrectly guessed, and repeat the same game with only two cards. Play this game with lots of cards and lots of short words until the student is proficient at guessing words based on the sounds.

 

The next step is to take away the cards and repeat the process starting with two sound words and progressing to 5 sound words.

 

This will help a child who hasn't yet mastered rhyming. This skill requires mastery of segmenting and blending. Put out three differently colored blocks. Let's say you put out a red one on the left and a blue one on the right, as the student sees them. The third one, green, is off to the side. Tell them that they represent the sounds in the word if. Ask what sound each of the blocks represents. Red is i and blue is f. Next, you say that the green is the sound n. Replace the blue block with the green one. Ask what the two sounds are and what word it makes. The student should understand that the new word is in.

 

Using the same three blocks you can go through a progression of words, replacing the blocks one at a time. Work through a progression like: if, in, on, an, at, as, is. Once two sound words are mastered, work on three, four and finally five.

 

A rhyming progression would be cat, sat, mat, bat.

 

Using the colored blocks to start, delete sounds out of words. Put out three blocks. Say that they represent the sounds in the word cat. Ask what word is left if you take away the "k" sound? The student should reply at. Say that most of the time, the final word will be a nonsense word. Play with words, saying what is fly without the f? What is sit without the s? When the student is ready, you can stop using the blocks and just do this orally.

 

 

These lessons are similar to the ones found in the programs below. I wrote Dyslexia: Recognizing, Screening and Treatment which is on sale this month. There is even more information on this page. One of our Brain Advancement Coaches, a Dyslexia teacher, said that the phonemic awareness section is the best she has seen!

 

Other programs include:

Computer programs:

 

Next week: Help! My student doesn't know the short vowel sounds!