phonics

[Guest guest]

OK, I know that we as parents can often get more from our kids than

teachers (or teachers can get more from them than parents :-) When

talking with the teacher briefly today, she mentioned that she thought

one of the SLPs goals was too advanced for . When I asked what

it was, she told me it was " blending " , and that she thought that

needed to know all her individual sounds first. I was

shocked...... told the teacher that she know them all, and that hadn't

she noticed that at school? Teacher said no, she would assess her

again. She has been doing many letter sounds since preschool, and

lately been driving me absolutely nuts :-) with the " Alphabet sound

song " ...... do ya know it...... A A A A Apple, B B B B Bubbles, C C C C

Cookie, etc.

So, today after school, I decided to " assess " her myself. Sat her in

front of the computer with me, typed in various individual letters in

large font, and asked her what they said. She got every one right

(though she does have a little trouble making the sound for r, but she

has a consistent sound for that). Then, I typed in single words like

cat, dog, hat and asked her what they were. She guessed random words

(pig, goat, Jesus, umbrella)..... guess sight words are not there yet.

So, I asked her to sound them out and tell me each letter. So, for cat,

she would say the sounds for " c " " a " " t " correctly, but then when I'd

try and get them together, we'd go back to random guessing. Even though

she can " sound out " the word, she has trouble putting them together.

Anyone have any advice here, because I know that the classroom teacher

thinks the only way to teach her to read is sight words (which are

important too, but I think I'd like to try both ways at this point).

I'm impressed with her great grasp of phonics...... she is only 5, and

I'll bet there are typical kids in her kindergarten who don't know all

the letter sounds yet.

Then, we moved on to rhyming words, which I have also been told she

can't do. I typed at, Mad, Sad, Bad, Dad, Had in a column, with the

" ad " underlined at the top, and had the M,S,B,D and H in red. She could

again, sound out the words, but not put them together. Then I tried

(after going through the list with her), asking which word was " S " ad

(emphasizing the S sound), and she picked it right out. Same with the

other words..... as long as she heard the first sound, she could pick

out the word. Did this with the " ook " family, and the " at " family, with

the same results. So, she really does not get the concept of rhyming,

but is picking letters sounds out to choose the correct words. Any

thoughts on this, and how to get the concept across.

I'm guessing these will be topics of discussion at Friday's IEP.

, mom to (8), (5), and (4)