Phonics - app or something

[NoPinkPlease]

Hi,

My ds (5), poss Asd, long time diagnosed hearing loss and consequent speech delay is in reception. They're trying to teach him phonics. We've tried to teach him lots of stuff over the years but really, colours, shapes, numbers were all learnt via an app on my iPhone. So, anyone know of any similar for phonics and reading stuff generally or where to look / get advice? [whilst the school works out what the hell to do ;-) ]

undiagnosed...

Your ds sound very, very like mine. We are just starting down the road to diagnosis (looking very like HFA) and getting the right support in at school both to help with his social/communication as well as his access to the curriculum as he has so many speech and language issues.
Ds is very computer/gadget focused (obsessed!) and we have used this to help his access education as he is a quick little learner but needs help to properly access and understand fully what he is doing.
I have been on the phonics app search for a little while and found there is very little English spoken apps and the ones I have found aren't that good or are a little to basic for reception level or don't explain themselves well (says she who is unsure if she is explaining herself well lol!).
One I have found is american but let's you record things in your own voice and take photos of things yourself to add which I know for my ds works well as it is relevant to him as its things he is familiar and comfortable with. However it isn't the best app and needs you to put in quite allot of time to set it up, I just haven't had time to play around with it much yet. It's called ABC photo touch I think and is one of the first to come up if you search the App Store for 'phonics'.
If anyone has any apps they love and swear by please do let me know!

We use a lot of apps to teach DD (non verbal, poss HFA/hearing loss), but for phonics, the best thing we've found is her Leappad - we bought a bunch of videos (Word World and 'Us') which she watches on the leappad, and we bought the books to go along with some of them for her Tag Junior, and she's really getting the knack of it. We've had more success teaching her whole words, but I think it's good for her to be aware of phonics because so much teaching happens on it.

MummytoMog. That sounds very interesting. My DS has Non verbal ASD and is also deaf. He loves looking at books and the thought of him teaching himself to read would be wonderful. How do you actually know that DD is reading? Genuine question as I'm interested.

Leap pad is great - there is also a set of letter sounds DVD's by the same people that are really cool. My niece is currently singing along to DS's old ones at only 2 in order to learn her letter sounds. DS used to watch them while I was packing lunches etc after brekkie. The DVD's are VERY visual, so might be helpful for children with some degree of hearing loss?

Don't turn up your nose at the old fashioned Ladybird Peter & Jane Key words series for a child who doesn't "get" phonics. They are how I learnt, to read, and I think still very good for that tiny percentage of kids for whom phonics is NEVER gonna be the magic reading bullet even if modern orthdoxy insists it's heresy to say so.

There's a reason why they are still on the market after so many years even if it's a dirty secret to admit in public that kids out there are still using them as their preferred reading instruction method lol! They are great confidence builders to help a child learn the 150 key words in a proper "I can read a real book by myself Mum!" sort of context! A great alternative to slow death by flashcard.

"clicknread" is a good cheap online phonic programme we use on the lap top. It's very structured and systematic so is useful for plugging "gaps" that school may miss. DS has audioprocessing issues and this programme has really helped with this over time - it's deffo helped him differentiate sounds properly. (It's not a magic reading bullet though as he's a sight/whole word reader by intuition not a phonics buff and never will be, so it's been a supplement to and not a replacement for whole words methods).

I agree with the Peter and Jane books. I can still remember all my old Ladybird books from the 70's.

We have huge success with Pearson Check Phonic and Pocketphonic - both ipad apps with english voices and spelling. We also use the old fashioned Peter and Jane books - we love the un pc-ness of them, but they do work a treat! If I see another ORT I'll scream!!

We thought she had just memorised her books to be honest, but her temp nanny pointed out to us a while ago that she could spell her name, so we started writing words out for her and asking her what they were, and suddenly discovered the little monster could read quite a lot of them. She does sort of get some phonics, so if I write out a (very short) word in lower case with gaps between the letters, she'll sound them out phonetically and combine them to make the word more or less correctly. But she does much better just learning whole words, as she's got a really strong visual memory.

Don't get me wrong, she can't sit down and read a whole book, but she can read lots of words in them. She knows the meaning of all nouns she can say (hundreds), and several verbs (maybe twenty?) but we have no real confirmation that she understands more complex sentences. Basically the most complicated thing she could say would be 'red cat climb stairs' or something like that, and I would be confident she understood what she was saying.

Sallybear does your son have any hearing at all? DD learnt because the app reads the word out to her we think (and she has an odd echolalia-like ability to recall pitch and intonation exactly), but she also knows some words because of the shape my mouth makes when I say it (I know that because she manipulates my face to make the shape of 'mummy' and a few other words like her brother's name and 'cuddle'). So when we learn words, she sits on my knee and I write them on the scribbler, then spell them, then say them (she generally looks at my face for that bit) and then erase and repeat. She normally has it by the third or fourth repetition.

DS doesn't even do Ecolalia sadly. He has a conductive hearing loss of 50dB caused by malformation of the middle ear and also glue that will never go. He wears a bone conduction hearing aid which gives him an aided threshold of 20-25dB.

Thanks so much for all your replies. I'm off to explore to see what I can find. :-)

Mr. Thorne's phonics, the best one for us.

We use mr Thorne does phonics too - ds loves it!