Supporting phonics in a child with speech disorder?

[crunchyfrog]

DS2 is 6, end of P2 (Year 1).

He recognises sight words - his own name plus a very few others.

On testing he knows about 11 sounds (s, a, t, p, n, m, s, o, l, g, c). The last 3 from speech therapy.

His IQ is above average (125 non verbal score), but he is increasingly losing self esteem and confidence.

We have all if the Jolly Phonics stuff, and he enjoys them. We no longer do homework as the teacher refuses to differentiate (oh, sorry, she differentiates "by outcome") so it is actually impossible, not just challenging.

Any ideas for good systems for him to use? Phonics is problematic due to inability to differentiate between vowel sounds, continued stopping, voicing and fronting and lack of "r" "sh" and other sounds, so suggestions of alternatives are welcome.

(Ds1 has a similar speech disorder but learned to read by sight when he decided to in P3, as he needed to read his beloved Guiness book of records! But he has ASD and was utterly unbothered by peer pressure, DS2 is miserable.)

Any suggestions? TIA!

My ds is also six and high IQ, and a speech disorder, verbal dyspraxia. So very similar. He has been learning to read and write since september and it has been very hard work but he is getting there. He can know recognise all 40-odd phonics.

We have done this by using a sign for each phonic. The signs are loosely based on the speech dyspraxia program, cued articulation and also made up by me and his therapists and teacher. The teacher learnt all the sounds and taught some to the other children in the class as well. By using signs, we knew that he could distinguish between the sounds. Now he is nearing the end of the school year, we rarely use the signs anymore, just occasionally.

It is very hard to keep up their self esteem. Ds has homework three times a week and the maths he flies through, but the reading takes him 90 minutes or so - he can do it, just very slowly with a lot of physical and mental effort. I don't force him to read everything and give him lots of rewards and encouragement. Also we have loads of books in the house and he is beginning to spontaneously choose books that he wants to read, and all reading is good.

We still have a long way to go - we are in Belgium and the system is very academic and inflexible.

Do you have much help from therapists?

I mean the teacher taught the signs to the other children.

Jolly Phonics also features actions but some children do find this distracting ...they recall the action but not the important part ...the sound.

If you have an iPad the Sounds Write app is excellent for reading and spelling.

Is he still getting speech therapy? Most speech therapists seem to approve of phonics because it helps with speech production.
whenn you say 'inability to differentiate between vowel sounds' are you talking about an inability to hear the difference between vowel sounds or inability to say the different vowel sounds?

I would think that if he can hear the differences learning to read with phonics shouldn't be a problem but spelling might be more difficult because he has to be able, at ome time, to segment his own spoken version of a word. Kelda's idea sounds very promising, though.

He doesn't appear to hear the difference, especially between "o" and "u" or "I" and "e"

I like the signs, they definitely help DS2. No iPad unfortunately.

I'm wondering about getting some less phonics based systems to build up his confidence with sight words alongside the school system. Which I think is linguistic phonics, I bought the Jolly Phonics for home.

We get 6 weeks of SALT twice a year, therapist referred him to paeds but they won't accept referral until he's had in school support, which he won't get this year as the teacher thinks he's just a bit thick. Sigh.

Thanks for replies!

?? regardless of what the teacher thinks they are employed to teach every child! The new SEND code of practice makes it clear that class teachers are responsible for the children in their class (and the child doesn't need to have identified SEN).

Google for Eddie Carron perceptual learning - it really really helped a boy I worked with a couple of years ago who wasn't getting anywhere with phonics and had lost a lot of self esteem.

My ds doesn't hear the difference between some vowel sounds - neither can I (also confuse s/z, v/f). This is a phonological disorder and the signs have helped ds identify the difference between the sounds.