Phonics and reading in Reception with severe speech delay?

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My DS turned 4 in April and has just started school. He's fine socially but is severely speech delayed. His receptive language is okay but his speech is not intelligible at all. He cannot produce all the sounds and blending sounds to form words is also problematic. However he is very chatty and we were told he's not autistic after assessment. He likes drawing, colouring, dancing, singing (althought unclear) and playing. He sleeps well, eats well, is quite compliant too- he sits down to be read- no meltdowns. He can say all alphabets and numbers (very unintelligible), but he just doesn't recognise numbers/ letters although he has been exposed to them since he was 2, both at home and nursery. His memory is also very good but not when it comes to numbers and letters. His EHCP is being drafted and we hope he will get all the support he needs at school which fortunately also has a speech and language unit.

I have a question. What strategy will be best to help him read? I have been reading to him all this while because he can't pronounce most letters/words let alone read books himself. When I read his phonics book, should I say aloud all the sounds of the letters, and blend them eg: sss-aaa-mmm, SAM? Or should I simply read 'SAM'? And do I make him say aloud the sound of each letter after me? And what do I fill in his reading record, since he obviously doesn't/can't read yet?

Just write something like ‘I read the story to him whilst he tracked the text with his finger and turned the pages.’ (If those are things he can do.) Whilst waiting for his EHCP, I would perhaps focus on oral blending as he need to be able to do that before he can blend written words. Have a box of (decodable) objects and sound out one of them for your son to pick out of the box/tray etc. (s-o-ck, b-a-g, j-a-m, p-o-t, c-u-p) You could then write in the diary ‘After I read the book to X, we played an oral blending game.) I would speak to his teacher/SENCo for more information and guidance. If you haven’t got parents’ evening this half term, make an appointment to see them.

It might be that he can still learn letters and phonics even if he can't say them all. My 4yo who also has a speech delay can recognise the letters k and d for example even though they sound the same when he says them. I know he knows the difference because he says d for daddy for 'd'.

Reception teacher here. Please don't worry, they won't be expecting him to be able to read himself yet (especially as they're aware of the speech delay). They'll just be thrilled you're sharing the books with him so I would write just that, that you read to him and he repeated back.

Definitely model sounding out. If he can repeat after you (in his own way) that's great. You'll be preparing him well for when he is ready to take over himself one day.

Sorry for the rushed reply, I'm on my lunch break but if you have any more questions please ask and I'll try to check back later.

In my sons school they used motions/hand movement to go along with the sound (Jolly phonics- I think) my dc had a terrible lisp due to tongue tie which wasn't caught until very late. (That's whole other thread) dc has since grown out of the lisp and I think phonics really helped with that. The repetitive nature of being taught them.

His teacher said that as long as they can model the action that goes with the sound it means they had comprehension of it and were hearing it correctly (not sure the significance of that one, not being a teacher). That through the first stages of phonics and reading this was the most important aspect, that they recognised the sound. We had a lot of issues around th, sh, ch, sn sounds.

When dc was starting to blend sound he would automatically do these actions so we knew he was on the right track.

May be see if this is something that they teach as well? Or that ypu can find independently. Keep reading to him, discuss the pictures, what do you think will happen next ? etc

I know our issue is very different to yours but the physical actions may give some reassurance that he is Learning.

@WGACA Thank you for your suggestion. I will talk to his SENCO and class teacher in his upcoming parent teacher meeting and ask them to help me with ideas to help him at home.

@UnbeatenMum I am hoping he will learn more letters and words with practice. He knows his shapes, colours and even maths such as more than less than. So I guess I need to be more patient and keep reading to him daily.

@BoleynMemories13 Thank you very much for your input. I will make it clear in the diary that I am the one reading the book to him. Hopefully we will be able to draft an EHC plan that will clearly state his needs around additional phonics support for both his speech and reading.

@OneMoreCookieMonster Bless your little one. I hope his speech and reading is better now.
Our school uses the "Letters and Sound" system of phonics. I have only begun to look it up on youtube and it seems like a good place to start.
I've heard about Jolly phonics and like the songs for the sound of each letter, however I am not sure they use it at DS's school. Btw, is their any difference in American and British phonics? Jolly Phonics, I believe is American?

Although phonics is the method of learning to read most primary schools use, there are other methods out there, and phonics is not appropriate for every child. My DC is 5 and has suspected apraxia of speech, so making individual sounds and blending them together is very hard. We are making much more progress with a "look and say" approach and the oxford reading tree books, which we do independently from school (although we do tell them what we are doing). That way we can build their confidence and ability with reading in a completely separate way from a method that places such emphasis on articulation and blending. The creation of sounds and blending of them is then something that is done very sensitively by the speech therapist alone.

I appreciate children are all different but DD had speech therapy throughout reception and year 1 and it wasn't a problem for her learning to read.

We did phonics as normal (sounding out s-a-m etc) and even though she couldn't always say the sounds correctly, she heard them correctly and understood the link between the sound and the letter/digraph. So when she read, as long as we took into account the fact that her pronunciation might be a bit off (eg DD had a real problem with vowel sounds so she would say "bake" but pronounce it more like "bike") it was clear that she knew what the words were and what they meant.

@DCINightingale I've been thinking the same. Maybe, DS can do better with other systems of learning to read. Can't tell anything right now. I'm thinking of waiting this year and see how he gets along. If he doesn't make much progress by the end of yr R, maybe then look into oxford tree reading books. Anyway, thanks for letting me know about it. Had never heard of it before. Will definitely look into it.

If the EHCP doesn't help with this, look at "cued articulation"

It is a system where each letter sound has an accompanying sign. It can be really helpful for children who can understand letter sounds and have the ability to blend, but who struggle to articulate the sounds.

Dd was reading before she spoke, she's autistic and speech was very late, but to my amazement she already could read when finally she bothered to speak, i honestly think she mostly didn't want to talk rather than couldn't!

Just read lots, encourage with flash cards, early readers and make it all fun

Our school did ort books and phonics it was the same thing?
Agree with poster who said phonics isn't the only way.
Try and read simple books to home normally and point at the words as you read.

And don't be afraid to ditch sounds and go for sight and context reading

Hi OP. I'd also like to follow this thread as we are in the same boat. Near identical situation although I've not had anything from school on how they are approaching this just yet.

Something like visual phonics might be helpful.

I have used this with deaf children with great success. Each phoneme has an accompanying sign) loosely connected to BSL. I introduced it to a mainstream teacher with a deaf child in her class and she used it with all of them. It was so successful they dumped Jolly Phonics and rolled it out to the whole of the EYFS.