Can any teachers with blending

[paddlingwhenishouldbeworking]

DD is just 5. She has had bad glue ear which caused a considerable speech delay but had grommets fitted in December which have helped, although her speech is still developing.

She can read words by sight but absolutely cannot blend.

So she knows all her letter sounds and I can spell letters out for her to write words which she enjoys. She can easily read and write independently 'It is a cat' but she cannot then read hat, mat, sat.

If she sounds out a word she'll sometimes focus on the last letter so h-a-t, TIP or m-a-p PEN. Other times its completely random.

Perhaps due to the interruption of her hearing with glue ear, she cannot 'hear' rhymes, she doesn't get the concept of words which sound the same.

We've looked at alphablocks, teach your monster etc and she just hears the individual sounds.

I think the glue ear and speech problems are very relevant but the teachers says just keep trying she'll get it in the end. Doesn't have any advice?

I know some children take a long time to get blending, that;s fine but I'd like to at least try and help as she desperately needs a confidence boost.

Sorry title should read 'help with blending'

Not much help i'm sorry but just bumping for you.

I would focus on singing lots and lots of rhyming songs and getting her to find words that rhyme. So you say h - a - t and ask her to think of as many words that rhyme as she can. I know in the DTs reception classes both their teachers sound out everything including directions so maybe you could do that at home too.

Hopefully some one will be along with more advice.

Could you try incorporateing "robot talk" a little bit every day. e.g. I'm just going to go and get your c-oat-t? Do you want j-a-m or h-u-nn-y on your toast? Eventually hopefully she'll be able to understand what you're saying then eventually be able to break the words up herself. It's normal that children can identify the first letter of the word then the last, the middle section takes longer.

You could try something from the Read Write Inc. scheme.

It's called Fred talk (something to do with a silly frog puppet/toy).
You look at a word, let's say 'hat' for example. Say it together. Then ask her how many sounds the word has. Repeat the word if necessary. She should then show on fingers how many sounds and what the sounds are.
If she gets it right, e.g. 3 fingers up and sounds out h-a-t then praise her. If she is wrong, work through it together, so show her your fingers, each finger is a sound etc.
Using flash cards works well with this as you can identify each letter and the sound it makes.

How would she do if you said it to her in 2 parts? h-at, p-en? Would she know that was hat and pen?
With writing she is doing the sounds in order so c-a then t, with reading she has to remember all the sounds. If she's struggling with 3 sounds try 2. So words like on, if, it. Break the three letter words into 2 sounds to begin with.

I'd avoid robot /Fred talk and onset and rime (c-at d-og etc) robot/Fred talk make it more difficult to hear the word because can be very choppy onset and rime is analogy and requires a great deal of memorisation.
Can she hear the words if you say the sounds? If not I'd do lots of work on aurally blending starting with compound words butter ...fly, foot ...ball, lady ...bird, bat...man etc the move onto words. Try blending through the word sound by sound /s/ /a/ sa /t/ pick words that start with a sound you can hold onto like /s/ rather than ones that are clipped like /k/ so man, mat, map, sit, sat, sun, rat, run, rug, leg, lad, nan, nut, van,vet, fin, fat etc rather than cat dog etc ...much easier to hear if you can elongate the sound

Agree with mrz.

Also words with digraph/long vowel sounds are apparently easier to aurally blend than CVC so sheep, rain, coin etc.

An activity I do with the children who are struggling to blend is get them to select a variety of toys- I 'robot talk' the names and they have to pick the right toy. Sometimes having a concrete object in front of them can help make the links.

mrz I don't really understand the comment about analogy and needing memorisation?
I would definitely work through words sound by sound as you suggest but if c-a-t can't be heard as cat I would try c-at. I don't mean for reading just can the OP's DD hear it as cat then. Hearing each individual sound is more complex so I would try to simplify it.

The OPs daughter would need to memorise the rime 'at' to use your methods because they aren't blending the sounds they are using the analogy method which requires children to memorise hundreds of extra pieces of information ...to read dog they would need to have memorised 'og ' to read bed they need to have memorised 'ed' ...I've seen children stuck with this method for the whole of Primary so my advice would be avoid it totally.
Words are read left to right so it's important to blend left to right and if necessary blend bit by bit but starting with the first sound then adding the second and then the third.

This is very helpful, thank you all so much. Will definitely work on the aural blending. She can often hear sounds in words when I sound them but its like she can't hear her own voice.

Starting to recognise by words by sight is a pain too now as she'll see the word within the word. So she'll see 'is' in f-is-h rather than 'f-i-sh'.

I do find robot talk the same for her as alphablocks as in it seems to keep the sounds separate and short then suddenly they become a word, as if by magic, rather than blending.

I don't think I've explained myself well, I definitely wouldn't use the method you've described for reading. I meant as a first step to see if she can hear the word when OP says it to her. She says her DD can't blend hat and mat. I wasn't sure from the op if the DD could hear cat if it was sounded out to her. If she can hear c-a-t that's great but if not I would be smoothly saying c-at, sss-un. I would do it like this so there is less for her working memory to remember. Not for reading. Definitely one sound at a time for that but I just wanted to know if she could hear the words first.

Sorry x post. Could you put sound buttons under the word so she knows where the sounds are? So for fish a dot under the f and i and a line under sh.

That's a good idea, I point with my finger and then run my finger below digraphs which worked for other DC but drawing them in might help.

My ds had delayed speech, possibly due to recurrent ear infections. A speech therapist friend advised us to get a cd rom (this was a very long time ago!) called Earobics. It's an American aimed at improving phonological skills. It was fab. I looked recently for a friend on Amazon and it's very expensive. My friend didn't want to pay it but I would absolutely recommend it.

She is not processing the sounds at the beginning of the word- just hearing the middle or the end. Try some activities where you give her three objects and tell her to give them to you in a particular order. e.g. dog, cat, fish (lotto cards are good for this) make sure they are words she knows.

With many children who have a hearing impairment the problem is with processing the sounds in the order they are given.

Try blending the first two sounds in a word e.g.
ca t
pe n
ho t
so the emphasis is on listening to the first two phonemes in a word.

It sounds like she needs some more work on the early sound work alongside the more formal phonics.
Lots of work on hearing the differences between sounds, rhyme and alliteration will help. If you google letters and sounds phase 1 there are lots of ideas for games in the document.
Usually this is covered in nursery but it sounds like your lo has missed the early building blocks because of her hearing and speech difficulties.
Yes to lots of "robot/Fred" talk.
The Read, Write inc "my turn, your turn" approach is good for children who struggle with blending and segmenting as it is constantly modelled.
There are lots of RWinc videos on YouTube that might help.

As I said coconut I would advise avoiding that method

Is she having speech therapy too? My DS had grommets fitted in the August just before starting school for the same reasons and underwent speech therapy until he was in yr 2.