Reading

[Guest guest]

We just started using the " Making Words " curriculum for reading. Has anyone

else used sound boxes to help with reading? It is based upon a book by

Cunningham entitled " Making Words " . We have adapted the sound box activities by

using plastic letter tiles. Since my son has such poor fine motor control, he

couldn't do the written activities. It is pretty easily adaptable to the

discrete trial format. You provide the child with a group of letters and

instruct him to spell words with the letters. You help by asking " what letter

sounds like ____ " . It's a phonics program. It is relatively fun too, which is

important when reading doesn't come easily.

We had been using the Edmark reading program and they are still using it with my

son at school, but he was confusing words that look alike like " dog " and " dad " ,

so we wanted to incorporate phonics into his program. My son finds the Edmark

stories boring. The first story was about a Frisbee, something he never plays

with. I've been using trade books to teach reading. I especially like the

Brand New Readers by Candlewick Press. They have about 3-4 words per page and

the stories are pretty good too. I also cut-up books to make matching cards

for sight-reading activities.

When I read to my son at night, I use a laser pointer to point to each word as I

read to highlight the 1:1 word correspondence. I also use highlighter tape on

words that he can read.

I had started -out using the 100 Easy Lessons book. This was tough. We used the

Bob books with it and again the stories were awful. My son kept requesting his

story books while we were reading about Matt and his hat. The Edmark program

went a little easier, but it was still difficult. It worked-out best to tailor

a program to my child.