DYSLEXIC reader helped by NOT sounding out??

[tetchyteacher]

I am teaching a group of year 2 children with dyslexic traits. One is particularly laboured when trying to decode simple words. I was working with him yesterday and decided to focus more on the 'mouth shape' when we make certain speech sounds. I showed him some letters and digraphs (which I was sure he knew well) and asked him to make the mouth shape, rather than actually say the sound. We then tried this when decoding. We would sound out the word using the mouth shapes only, and then read the whole word at the end. It seemed that his accuracy was improved, perhaps because he was using his 'inner voice' rather than big confused by having to remember and sequence the sound heard out loud. Did cutting down on the amount of auditory information help him, somehow? Any thoughts?

I think if it works, do it.

Although a fervent supporter of proper phonic teaching, I believe there is a small subset of children for whom it is not the best form of teaching, those with auditory processing issues. I seem to remember an article I read dealing with this issue, sorry to be so vague about it.

I'm not a teacher nor a child, however I have dyslexia.

I need to sound words out in my head, and if someone spells a word out to me, it confuses me even more as I need to think about the correct letter in the sequence if that makes sense.

My dyslexia wasn't diagnosed until I was 15 so I've never had any help with it. I've just learned to cope with it and figure out a way to deal with it that suits me.

Sounds as though for this kid, thus approach is working.

Thanks both of you.

Humphrey, can you remember any details at all about that article?

Cranky, its interesting, as apparently some dyslexics don't have an inner voice at all! (just read an article about that).

i think the more technical term for what i'm describing, might be 'subvocalising'. but i still can't find out much about it.

So sorry, I can't remember anything else.

Have you tried the toe by toe book?

Almost all children with dyslexia have a 'phonological deficit'. Google that and you might find something useful.

There's lots and lots you can do to help improve the phonological deficit but unfortunately most of the popular phonics programs (especially Read, Write, inc) don't focus on it and hence aren't as effective as they could be.

There is quite a bit of research that shows that children with a hearing impairment can develop good phonic skills using "Visual Phonics".

This is a set of 44 hand shapes used near the mouth (meaning lip patterns and shapes can also be accessed) enabling children who have hearing impairments to develop phoneme to grapheme correspondance through visual means. The research says that deaf children using this method become better readers and in the long term it helps them to develop higher levels of comprehension too.

I wonder if this might also help dyslexic pupils? I know of at least one school where all the pupils both hearing and deaf use this scheme right from reception.

I have also just started to use this with my young HI pupils.My pupils seem to find it much easier to blend phonemes that with Jolly Phonics.

Visual Phonics by Hand Might be worth a look?