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At Home With Jesus!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Katie-Noel and reading......
It has been a struggle teaching Katie-Noel to read this year.
We were warned that children with apraxia or other speech problems may have problems when learning to read, spell, and write. That appears to somewhat be the case with Katie.
We have tried several different programs for learning to read this year.
She sailed through the primers of "Explode the Code, " and she knows her whole alphabet and all of the letter sounds - and so I thought all was going to go smoothly. Not so much.
The problem comes with blending. I think that, in her mind, Katie is able to put the letters together - but what she can verbalize is a different story.
For instance, in the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" - they play a game to teach your child blending skills. The game is called "say-it-fast"
Example: 'motor' .... 'boat' ......( say-it-fast!) "Motorboat!"
then you progress to letter sounds/words: "mmmmm" ... "eeeeeee" (say-it-fast!) "ME!"
It's a great concept , and it worked very well for Joseph - but with Katie (who has a hard time saying words slowly, much less fast)....it just wasn't going to work.
We looked at Explode the Code - Book 1, because she had loved the primers so much, but within the first few pages the child was expected to be able to read 3 letter words (bat, cat, man,etc.) Katie just couldn't do it yet.
We also looked at "First Reader" and the "Abeka Phonics/Reading Handbook"
They also started blending in the first few pages - and she got very frustrated.
So - I decided to try a different approach.
(*and a BIG thank you to my friend Daisy who suggested practicing with 'word families!')
I make up some simple worksheets and we took it one 'word family' at at time.
We worked on the short "A" sound and started with the -AT family, and then moved on to -AN and -AP.
We basically "memorized" each word family as a 'set', and then added the initial sound.
And it clicked!
We also played some file-folder games to practice our short vowels.
She wasn't quite as adept at thse...but she was able to guess many of them based on their first letter. They were still good reading practice - and more importantly...they were FUN! 
And - finally, we saw some success!
Last night Katie read her first story to me!!!
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