phonological awareness

[henryhorrid]

Any advice on phonological awareness training for child aged 4 and half who has distorted speech possibly due to long term hearing loss??

Audiologist has recommended we consider using a programme to help as he appears behind in this area ie hearing a similar sounding word such as key for pea when tested despite hearing now being ok.

Has anyone used any programmes and any recommendations or otherwise?

It would be in addition to speech therapy and the usual input at home (stories/rhymes/games etc)

Um... I don't know how useful it would be, but I found 'Teaching Your Monster To Read', to be great.... The computer says the phonics out loud and you have to repeat them whilst looking at the letter on the screen. It might really help match up looking at the letter to the phonic and to the sound. It is also really fun, and if you are with him then you can keep repeating the phonic if he doesn't hear the example.

One thing, it does have really annoying background music. I think you can turn it off by holding down the 'm' key on the computer. That way the background silly music doesn't interfere with hearing the letter/s.

BTW I couldn't find a way of going back over levels without starting it again under a different child's name, so if you want to repeat any of it then I would do that. My children love it and it has helped my 4 year old hugely. I don't think she has an auditory disorder but finds it really difficult to concentrate/hear when there is a lot going on.

HTH, let me know what you think of it and if you find anything else useful

When DS speech therapist was doing phonological awareness stuff with him, she would do things like picking two contrasting sounds e.g. K and d and had a list of words or objects either beginning or ending with these sounds (depending on what we were working on at the time) she would say them and ask him to sort them according to the correct sound (we liked feeding them to a monster).
Also having around four pictures, three with the same sound at the beginning or end and then one with a different one and he had to pick the odd one out.
Something that really helped DS with is sounds was when the therapist used cued articulation- so she has hand movements that go with each sound to cue him in to which sound it us snd how to make it.
If you google cued articulation I think there maybe some pictures somewhere.
Hope some of that is useful.

You need to work on activities like identifying rhyming words, sounds at the beginning and end of words, breaking words down into sounds (cat is made up of c, a and t), and putting sounds together to make words (c-a-t makes ?).

This is a good link for what the child should know at various ages.

media.wix.com/ugd/1561b8_38f8aa9d76430ef84e9698601ba8cc1d.pdf

There is a good app (quite expensive though) for iPad Articulation station. You can practice sounds in different positions. But I would imagine SALT needs to lead on this and give you very specific exercises with clear instructions how to do them and how to check progress.

You need to ask for a SaLT referral (I'm surprised the audiologist hasn't done this) so that you get a programme tailored to your child's individual needs rather than a general one which could make things worse.

It depends exactly what level they are at.
You could play sorting games. Sorting into piles/ post-boxes etc pics of things that begin with p and some s (highly contrastive sounds if he's really struggling) or s and f (if he already has some awareness).
I spy.
Animal bingo where you have to say the first/last sound of each animal as you take a turn.
Pop up pirate where you need to match a letter sound with the letter before each go.
Rhyming, smilies, talking about sounds etc
But IMO you may be to early if he is still not producing a lot of sounds correctly or at all. Schools have tests they what him to pass for their stats. But if he's not ready yet there is nothing to say learning a bit later will mean he won't catch up. Just like how some kids walk later they catch up quick.