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How can I teach my daughter to read when she seems to jumble the sounds in her head??

29 replies

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 14:30

Hi, my 6 year old daughter has speech, language and sensory processing difficulties. She dosn't seem to hear words or sounds correctly although she's passed several hearing tests. She's been in Nursery/ school since she was 2 years old but is now being home educated do to lack of support and understanding in her school. She has learned most of her letter sounds, only confusing the ones which look similar like b,d,p etc. There are also some which she can't seem to hear or say at all like r, l and e.

Although she knows and can recognise and write lots of different letters, she can't seem to blend them to read simple words. We played a game the other day when we wrote the words cat and dog. She knows these letters very well, so I wrote a list of words for her to read using only these letters. It was ment to be a confidence boosing excersise, to show her how much she can read just by learning those few letters. She found it so hard though. She'd sound out c-o-g then say "dog!" or t-a-c "cat!" She seemed to be enjoying it and she thought she was doing well. When I tried to say get her to listen again or said "your nearly right, but shall we try it together?" She quickly got frustrated and gave up. Sad It's such a shame as she seemed to be so pleased with herself when she thought she was reading the words.

I was just wondering how we could go forward with this in a fun positive way? I know in home ed terms she's still very young but she does enjoy doing things like this and it'd give me some confidence to see her moving forward, even if it's extramly slowly. I don't want to just give up on it until she's older as she's already come so far in learning these sounds, I don't want her to loose these skills and have to start from scratch.

She is on the Brain Gym movement programme at the moment, then she will recieve therapy for Auditory processing so hopefully this will help. She's also on the waiting list for speech and occupational therapy.

Any advice would be appreciated. Smile

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mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 16:34

bump

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crystalglasses · 13/02/2011 16:43

I'm sure there are some fun computer programmes/educational games that would help. I would say not to get to the point that she gets frustrated. Maybe when she gets things nearly right it's time to switch to something else and go back to it later in the day.

catinhell · 13/02/2011 16:48

i am at the early stages of dyslexia teacher training course. am by no means an expect in the field of reading and spelling dificulties but...

it sounds like she needs to do much more phonological training before you introduce letter- sound correspondance. in other words, she needs to do lots of work on listening to, hearing and generating sounds without EVEN LOOKING at a letter or word.

for example, if you said to her...
"i'm going to sound out a word like a robot,
eg
b-oy
s-ea
p-i-t
which words am i saying?"
could she do an exercise like that orally? if she cannot blend sounds that are SPOKEN and HEARD, then its too much to ask her to READ the words. did that make sense?

catinhell · 13/02/2011 16:53

'expert'

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 17:06

Thank you, that's really helpful. Smile

I think she'd actually enjoy that too. She seems to get a lot of satisfaction when she she thinks she's achieving something.

I can look out for computor software but would probubly need a new lap top as this ones sound is awful.

Her listening seems to be very good when it comes to tunes, rythem and pitch. She can sing songs to the exact tune, pitch etc but the actual words are very distorted.

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catinhell · 13/02/2011 17:20

i would download the 'letters and sounds' programme (published by dept for education as part of the primary national strategy). This programme is followed in primary schools, nationally. there is a lot of useful material in there, esp from the early phases, which may give you a bit more background on the teaching of synthetic phonics.

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 17:33

I'll download that then. I think we do need to build on her foundations before pushing her to move forward.
I think the biggest problem at school was that she had to move forward with the others in her class before she had the basics. They did try to tailor it to her needs but couldn't give her the time and support she needed. She had learned some times tables parrot fashion but couldn't mentally add 1+1. Hmm

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activate · 13/02/2011 17:33

awaits the "yoursmartchildnow" post with bated breath Grin

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 17:42

What's that ????? Confused

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IndigoBell · 13/02/2011 17:59

MLL - no idea if it would help or not (I suspect not) but have a look at 'word wasp' and 'hornet' which say they help children with auditory discrimination problems.....

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 18:14

Oh, I see. Grin

IndigoBell- I'll have a look at those. I'm willing to try anything. Smile

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Yoursmartchildnow · 13/02/2011 18:16

This reply has been deleted

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IndigoBell · 13/02/2011 18:21

Your smart child now - I know you've just spammed every thread and I should totally ignore you (advertising on here is illegal)

But, Lucy has serious learning difficulties. I can absolutely promise you no 15£ per hour tutor is going to be able to help her. Please think - or better yet - please stop posting.

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 18:33

There it is, right on cue. Grin

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mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 18:40

Well said IndigoBel! Wink

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mrz · 13/02/2011 18:45

especially from a tutor who can't spell!
MLL I really think you need the SaLT assessment because it does sound as if Lucy may have processing difficulties as indigo says.
Memory games where she needs to recall a number of items and following one then two then three ...instructions may be fun and helpful.

IndigoBell · 13/02/2011 18:54

MLL - I know we have discussed lots of this before. But, last week my DD was assessed by the Sound Learning Centre and they said that as well as having hypersensitive hearing she also has auditory discrimination problems. Now this was a total surprise to me because a NHS Audiologist told us her hearing was fine.

So she is doing Auditory Integration Training with them next week. And I fully expect it to cure her auditory discrimination problems.

(The reason I expect it to cure, is because it has already worked miracles on my DS, so no reason for it not to do the same for DD...)

mrz · 13/02/2011 19:00

Indigo I was chatting with the audiologist who visits school to check hearing and she said she was passing children's hearing for children who would have been referred in the past simply to meet targets Sad

hocuspontas · 13/02/2011 19:00

I'd also make sure she could blend 2-letter words first before trying 3-letter words.

mummyloveslucy · 13/02/2011 19:18

She will be starting the Johansen sound therapy program soon. She's doing Brain Gym first though as the therapist thinks this will benefit her.

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IndigoBell · 13/02/2011 20:05

mrz - given that the NHS doesn't do anything like Auditory Integration Training it doesn't really matter if those kids are passed by the audiologist or not....

(Auditory Integration Training is amazing by the way. The before / after Audiograms for DS were jaw dropping)

mrz · 13/02/2011 20:19

but even for those children who have straight forward hearing loss - glue ear etc aren't being identified so are at risk of falling behind

mummyloveslucy · 14/02/2011 18:35

Is auditory integration training similar to the johansen sound therapy? She'll be starting that soon.

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IndigoBell · 15/02/2011 06:13

There are a lot if auditory therapies. As far as I can tell AIT is The best one, because they start by taking an audiogram, then they construct the music exactly based on the audiogram. You do AIT for 10 days in a row and then it's finished. You never need to do it again.

I don't see how any listening therapy that doesn't start with an audiogram can be as good. Which is why I think the other listening therapies get more mixed results.

We did AIT with DS a year ago. His initial audiogram was awful. Like a mountain range when it's meant to be more flat. He had significant hypersensitivity plus auditory discrimination problems plus even a tiny bit of hearing loss. At the start I think his audiogram ranged from 25 to -10. A huge range which was causing him significant discomfort. After the 10 days of AIT his hearing was almost flat line on 0 (ie perfect hearing).

Obviously this has had a significant improvement on him and his behaviour.

Then when they did DDs audiogram last week it was very similar to DSs. A mountain range with lots of hypersensitivity.

I don't know any of the other listening therapies, but if they're not based on an audiogram from Lucy I don't think the results will be as spectacular.

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