Phonics, reading - 5 year old in Reception

[13MAPARTHELL]

My child who has just turned 5 and in term 3 within his reception class is struggling with his learning.

He has autism & PDA profile, currently going through EHC appeals process.

Im not overly worried, but when researching his struggles others on here have stated that the child can read only X amount of words etc

my child only knows the phonics of his name, as seen in his name. He does not see numbers vs letters & does not recognise letters and sounds. When sounding small words out, c-a-t and asking him to relay the first sound, he will say something completely different, he has no grasp at all, he can write his first name OTIS but he cannot write anything else, even with those same letters outside of his name he doesn’t understand.

for example i can say, what word starts with a BH and he will say jungle?

does anyone have advice please on how to support him further? It seems he just blurts anything out without thinking kind of thing?

My son is a bit like this although not as ‘extreme’ (he also doesn’t have any special needs we are aware of) but he definitely just blurts an answer out. It can be frustrating. I was trying to read with him last night and he was struggling with t-a-p and kept blurting out pan. Then when I tried to help him and said ‘what do you use when you wash your hands? T-a-p?’ He said ‘soap,’ arghhh.

What programme is your ds following? We do little wandle.

https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/product/bear-necessities-book-a1/
10 minutes every day - flash cards so gets to know the sounds and letters and shouting out the sounds can help with blending. Ds couldn't make the connections but that was partly short term memory issue and not hearing sound correctly and think your DS may have different issues.

More for Fun see if he gets on with Teach your monster how to read.

Maths - https://www.themathsfactor.com/ and things like numericon, rods or just lego and practise could help.

However I'm not a teacher nor do I have experience of autism & PDA profile - just parenting my own dyslexia, dsypraxia and adhd kids- so these may not help but may be worth a look while you wait for more relevant experinced replies.

Yes I’d recommend flashcards too. What reading scheme does his school do? They often have flashcards you can buy.

Some autistic children can be very resistant to phonics. To them, the alphabet is simply the alphabet: ABC (as in ay, bee, see), at for apple etc, not ah, buh cuh etc. You say he has a PDA profile too, which is going to make him even more resistant to being taught how to sound words out and listen for initial sounds etc.

Have you spoken to the school (teacher or SENCO)? Some autistic children respond much better to a whole word approach (flash cards). It sounds like he simply sees a word as a whole, rather than acknowledging that they are split into sounds. Phonics is obviously the key approach to reading which is encouraged in schools, because it works for most children, but where it really isn't working we need to adapt. Talk to the school about it, see what they suggest.

Thank you, so far the school are pretty useless - its a constant, hes very behind but its ok, as despite his diagnosis and 40 page in depth diagnosis, they cannot connect the two. The SEN support is non existent, they don’t understand autism, so they dont understand hes learning differences and needs, he’s quite complex and he wont share these struggles, he can communicate perfectly fine but he can’t communicate feelings or emotions only generally anger.

That's rubbish. If they continue to be that unsupportive, I'd start to reconsider whether it's the right setting for him. Some mainstream schools deal with SEN much more effectively than others.

In the meantime, you could try him with some basic flashcards and see if he takes to it better. CVC words like cat, dog, sun, pot etc. It's worth a go, he might enjoy it more as it's more literal than phonics. This is the word, it says _ (rather than getting him to sound out, as is sounds like he's not making the connection yet that those sounds blend together to represent that word).

It might be better for your son to learn to read by word recognition. Some children just don’t take to phonics.

I would think about your son’s ability to recognise environmental sounds before thinking about phonetic sounds. Things like matching animals to the sounds they make and recognising the sound of a car driving past as being a car. Then there are lots of phonological awareness activities that can be done before learning phonics for reading. There is no point trying to teach reading through phonics until he has grasped the pre reading skills.