Why can't my child read?
My son knows his sounds. Why can't he read words, when the sounds are in the words?
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1 Expert Answer
Kathleen R J. answered • 09/25/23
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Tutoring in Your Home or Library, Ages 5-11
Your child probably doesn't know how to blend the sounds. Rather than isolating the sounds, blend them into words. I had a student in kindergarten who knew all their sounds go from the bottom of the class to near the top of the class in only six weeks. This is unusual, but it happened. It's better for children to have two in person lessons a week. They learn far more than they would if they had one hour a week for twelve weeks.
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Carla W.
Research has shown that when individuals struggle to read the base issue is phonological awareness and how the brain processes sounds. Without testing I can’t ensure you that this is the issue, but your description fits well with it. The problem is physical, and the remedy is very specific instruction to help the brain learn to process sound in the same way that proficient readers do. As this is addressed, the reading process that you describe becomes possible and the child succeeds. There are two critical skills involved here, and it is best to teach them initially without letters and then to transition to print. The first is oral blending, which breaks down to the phoneme level, which is the smallest unit of sound in the English language. Start with having your child blend compound words after you say each word separately. Next, take off the initial sound in a word and have the child blend to figure out the word, then the ending sound, then three sounds. A example is blending butter and fly into butterfly, c. At. Into cat, do. G. into dog, and then f. I. Sh. Into fish. There are harder and easier sounds to hear and form (the technical part that I can’t explain here in detail), but this is a basic form of the instruction needed and is the foundation for reading. To develop spelling work on oral segmentation, where the child breaks apart words and then sounds. Give a compound word, have the child tell you the two words. You say butterfly, the child says butter and fly. Then have the child break off the initial sound (breaking off the c sound from cat), then the ending sound (breaking off the g in dog), then break the word cat into three sounds. Do this for short periods of time, up to 5 min. as a fun game. If the child can’t “hear” it, meaning process it, really model and then pull away the modeling. As phonological processing begins to be successful, include adding the letters and sounds that your child knows to blend words. Both phonological processing and application to letters should happen at the same time. The difference is that phonological processing can be done in the dark, there is no visual activity needed. A person highly trained in reading instruction learns how to do this as a part of earning a reading endorsement that is added to their teaching license. It varies by state, but the overall process is the same. I hope this helps, the good news is that you are catching it early and when phonological processing is remediated students go on to be proficient readers!12/21/23