RE: phonemic awareness, auditory processing, hand signals

[Guest guest]

,

You have obviously taken it upon yourself to become educated about your

child's deficits. WOW!

To me it would make sense that if a child's auditory system can't

distinguish between very similar sounds yet, that sound localization in the

mouth as a cue might help. I couldn't find any direct articles that spoke

directly to that topic but, in general, multisensory approaches to learning

are often key to helping children with apraxia. As your child has already

experienced in speech therapy, using hand cues was helpful to learning how

to create speech sounds correctly.

Here are some resources that you and your child's teacher may find helpful:

From: http://www.pen.k12.va.us/VDOE/Instruction/Reading/findings.pdf

LISTENING SKILLS

Auditory Processing/Phonological Awareness Checklist

For Classroom Teachers

.. Confusion in sounds/words heard

.. Difficulty in spelling words that are dictated

.. Problem remembering names and places that are heard

.. Requests a speaker to repeat what is said on a frequent basis

.. Difficulty in following directions that have been given orally

.. Easily distracted by extraneous sounds/noises

.. Leaves out words and letters when asked to repeat sentences/words

.. Identifies one sound or word for another (substitutes incorrect or word)

.. Confuses the sequence of sounds, words, and steps in a task when

presented verbally

.. Trouble differentiating one sound from another

.. Displays avoidance behavior during writing/reading activities

.. Inability to select and attend to relevant auditory stimuli

(frequently I inattentive when stories are read and discussed)

.. Difficulty recognizing a word when only parts are given.

.. Slowness to respond to questions presented orally

.. Inappropriate responses to relatively simple, age appropriate

questions

.. Inability to gain any meaning or the complete meaning from

material presented orally

(Adapted from Pamela Strickland, 1993, Auditory Processes, Revised Edition,

Academic Therapy Publication.)

How Now Brown Cow: Phoneme Awareness Activities for Collaborative

Classrooms

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/teaching_techniques/cld_hownow.html

" ...As stated by Lewkowicz (1980), " Children should be familiarized with

speech sounds in isolation before they attempt to detect sounds within

words " (p. 694). Because children are usually unaware that words are made up

of individual speech sounds that can be produced in isolation, it is up to

the teacher to provide children with a concept of speech sounds. This is

probably best done by associating phonemes with a creature, an action, or an

object that is familiar to the child. For example, the phoneme /s/ can be

associated with the hissing sound a snake makes-sssssss. A sound personality

can be created by calling /s/ the " Sammy snake " sound. Many sounds have

natural associations, such as a crowing rooster for /r/, a buzzing bee for

/z/, and the " be quiet " sound for /sh/. A suggested list of sound

personalities is in the Appendix.

Sound personalities can be introduced naturally and in context by selecting

a particular sound to talk about that is stressed in alphabet or other books

that use alliteration. For example, Obligato (1983) presented " smiling

snakes sipping strawberry sodas " for the alphabet letter S. It is helpful to

create or provide pictures that represent these sound personalities and to

post them in the room as each is introduced. A natural connection can

sometimes be made between the sound and the letter, such as presenting a

picture of " Sammy snake " drawn in the shape of the letter S or " Buzzy bee "

flying in a pattern of the letter Z (see Figure 1). Besides providing a

label to facilitate talking about sounds, the pictures provide

self-correcting cues for children engaged in initial sound isolation and

sound-to-word matching activities... "

(figure one - picture of a snake shaped in an " S " and bee leaving a trail in

the shape of a " z " .

Multisensory Structured Language Programs:

Content & Principles of Instruction

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/reading/mssl_methods.html

You mentioned auditory processing difficulties. I know that many families

have had success using " earobics " or simlar programs to help with auditory

processing. I don't have direct experience with any of these sorts of

programs.

Just in case you are interested, there are literacy camps that you can

enroll your child in during the summer to help with reading skills. If you

can't find a camp listed in your area, I would call the nearest university

and ask if they have a literacy or phonemic awareness camp. I know that back

in St. Louis our SLP ran a reading camp. I am actually considering taking my

6 year old to some sort of literacy camp this summer. Here is a listing of

summer camps registered with ASHA:

http://www.asha.org/public/outreach/camps/

Not all camps are listed with ASHA so if you are interested in a literacy

camp, you might want to look beyond the ASHA listing.

Let us know how it goes with working with the teacher and SLP on this!

Tricia Morin

North Carolina

wrote:

My 6 year old (resolved apraxia of speech) is now in a mainstream

kindergarten class and working on phonemic awareness. I am working on a

letter to his teacher (which I am cc-ing to the school SLP b/c my son is on

a consult basis). .

" Homework worksheet this week required him to select the letter sound that

corresponded with the picture on the worksheet. The sounds /o/, /g/ and /k/

were targeted.

I noticed that my son had a hard time hearing the difference between

/g/ and /k/ sounds. While in private speech therapy, he learned /g/ and

/k/ velar sounds in conjunction as they are voiced (vibrations are

used) and voiceless (vocal cords are kept apart) consonant matches; one

consonant sound is voiced ( /g/ ) and one consonant sound is voiceless (

/k/ ). The voiced sound is made in his throat and the unvoiced is made

on the back of his tongue.

What helped him with his homework sheet was to try to get him to

realize *where* in his mouth the sound was being created. I would touch his

throat when he said a word starting with the /g/ sound. I would verbally

tell him to feel the /k/ sound on the back of his tongue as he produced

it and throw my hand back in the air at my jaw level as a visual cue.

Ideally if he can do the hand signals he will also get a kinesthetic cue

for the letter sound that he is producing and hopefully identify the

letter sound successfully.

Because there is a suspicion of are auditory deficits, it

might be necessary to use multi-sensory cues to facilitate sound

localization so he can differentiate two similar sounds that might sound the

same according to his auditory system. "

END OF LETTER TO TEACHER AND SLP

Does this letter make sense? Is this sound localizing approach anything

that any of

you have used to help your child with phonemic awareness?

Thanks in advance for an insight you can provide.