How to help a child who doesn't "get" blending?

[Patchworksack]

I help in my daughter's year 1 class half a day a week listening to children read. The school do Read, Write, Inc and they have spent lots of time in YR on phonics. Most of the children are on book band 3 or 4. The school had to make a lot of TAs redundant at the end of last year which means much reduced reading support in school. There is one boy in the class who seems to be massively behind, he has secure knowledge of all the single letters but he can't blend CVC words. His reading book is one of the flip books with a single word on the page then flip over to see the picture. It doesn't look like he is getting any support at home, nobody is signing his planner to say they have practised with him. The school have had several workshops to teach parents how to support the scheme at home and had a meeting for all the families where the children were not meeting expectations in YR. I don't get chance to speak to the teacher about it because I come in after the register and have to sign out before the end of school to get my daughter and it would be a bit odd to ask for a meeting about a child who isn't mine. Any suggestions to help him? He just can't hear that c-a-t is cat and he's obviously demoralised with it.

If the OP can’t talk to the teacher, she can still have a word with the SEN contact. She’s essentially a volunteer TA. It can be done informally...as in say “hey SENCO Sally, I’m a reading assistant in so and sos class and this one boy I work with has me a bit concerned he may have SN, would you be willing to discuss what I’m seeing and if it’s worth bringing to the attention of so and so (the teacher) and his parents?

I think you sound like a lovely helper OP - as a busy primary teacher in an underfunded system I’d be very grateful to have someone proactive like you listening to readers in my class!

The teacher is likely very aware of the issue but unable to provide much more support than he/she already is, due to teaching the rest of the class with no one to help catch up those struggling. People who say ‘oh but we didn’t have TAs in my day’ forget that in their day children who were struggling were either written off as lazy or slow, or kept behind after school go catch up because the teacher didn’t have to spend so much time on bureaucracy as we do now.

As a teacher I’d be happy for you to chat to me about it, though for confidentiality reasons I obviously wouldn’t be able to go into too much detail.

My son is doing Read write inc in Reception.
His teacher does this robot thing that really helps with Blending.

She tells them
To do "robot" arms while blending. So for example, when saying "c" you would pull your left robot arm up. Then you say "a" and pull your right robot arm up. Then you say "t" and pull your already left arm back down.

Then you do this again but speed up c -a -t with the robot arms. Go faster and faster with the saying and robot arms and eventually it has blended from "c-a-t" to actually sounding like cat as it's so fast.

Doe that help? My son loves the robot arms and it's really helped
With blending

Re Norestformrz's comment. The reason I posted was precisely because the results of the study are surprising to most people. Have a look at the research. It's highly respected.

It's also the case that the majority of consonants can't be pronounced without the schwa vowel.

Do you have a link to the research twoyears? It's certainly contrary to all published research I've read and my own experience.

Norestformrz

Just Google 'The Cluella Study' and you will get a number of links including:

The abstract version:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10862960802629197

The complete version:
journals.sagepub.com › doi › pdf

You’ll notice the complete version refers to the distortion that occurs when attempts are made to minimise the effect of the schwa vowel.

We’ve worked over years across local authorities with children who have the greatest level of difficulty and we absolutely agree with the findings re the above. (We also have a 4/5 stage procedure for teaching blending) I’m happy for you to pm me if you’ve got more questions.

Patchworksack

If you’d like to pm me I could give you a quick technique that you could use to help your pupil.

OP, you sound like a great volunteer helper!

With my third, the teacher told us to give most emphasis to the first letter, less to the second and tail off for the third (if that makes sense) - it was a revelation as doing it that way make the word come out far more easily.