1a Sound Drill

These short videos are best looked at with a lesson plan in front of you, 

This is the student's fourth lesson, and we are working on Lesson 1.1. Prior to these lessons, he has never had any formal reading instruction.

We are starting small -- just working with the short vowel A, and a few consonants.

I start off the Sound Drill reviewing the Key Word Page, because he needs that extra aid.

Then we go to the tiles, and he does the same thing from the tile letter A.

I make sure he makes the movement. This comes in handy later, as you'll see.

1b Reverse Sound Drills

You'll notice I don't correct everything. He says "D make duh."

I could correct his verb agreement, and I could ask him to cut off the extra sounds at the end of /d/. (It's /d/, not duh.)

But I am trying to stay focused on the sound drill. We have enough fish to fry, and I'll get to those things later.

Some of you saw videos of an earlier lesson with this student. He's improved, right?!

1c Writing

We have this extra challenge: this student does not know how to write his letters.

We have been working on writing outside of these lessons, but within the phonics lesson we just deal with it as it comes. I model for him, and guide him. And we keep going.

2a Reading Words with Tiles

As always, I am tailoring the lesson to his needs:

- Starting out by asking him to say the sounds, one at a time, which he is still shaky on.

- THEN going to tapping and blending when needed.

- Only using a few words within our already limited choice of letters: mat, sat, fat, rat.

- Later in the lesson, because he’s doing well, we add N and then D.

2b Sounding Out Tiles

Notice how when I say the word fat, I say it so he can hear every sound.  Especially important for this student, who drops so many of his final sounds. (But important for all students!)

...But then I should have asked him to write on the desk with two fingers. (The two fingers aids in memory!) 

Also note that when the student puts the tiles back onto the board, we want him to put them back in alphabetic order. This is tricky in the beginning, when we just have a few letters. But that is the direction we are going in: a neat board with tiles in alphabetic-order at all times. 

2c Writing

Because he is still learning to write his letters, the writing sections are labored.

Notice that we want him to know all the sounds in the word before he starts writing.

(Also, his tapping and stretching skills are still off. I will probably work more on this with him in the next lesson. It is essential that he be able tap, stretch, and blend well.) 

3a Word Cards - Reading

Progress! He's getting it! And you can see it on his face. :) 

Is fad a useful word for this student? I don't think so. I do like to focus on useful words... But we have a very small selection of words at this point, and it's useful to go back and forth from fat to fad. 

3b Word Cards - Writing

For this section we get the Dictation Sheet out, and I dictate from the cards.

If the student gets stuck writing the word, we go back to the sounds.

I'm still choosing the same words we worked on earlier in this lesson. I want him to master the small selection of words we are working with - sad, mad, fad, sat, fat, mat.

In general, we don't want to ask a student to spell something we haven't asked them to read earlier in the lesson. As they become more proficient with the spelling patterns, this rule loosens up. But at this level, we want to set up the student for success.

4a Sight words - Reading

Please note a change:  I placed Sight Words ahead of Phrase Cards. Before this student in the video, I had never worked with a student who didn’t know any sight words. We need to work on sight words, like the, before we go to phases, like the rat. The new improved lesson plan that is about to be unveiled will reflect this.  

This is definitely not the best example of how to work with sight words. When he gets stuck, I just give him the answers, and then I move on to the next one. I'm going way too fast.

What could I have done better? Post your suggestions in the comments!

Also, I'm using these giant sight word cards, which I happened to have lying around. If your student really struggles with sight words, you could make your own giant cards (lower-case, written in print). But normally we use the small printed cards. 

4b Sight Words - Writing

Again, so much effort in forming the letters, and, again, I'm going too fast.

5a Phrase Cards - Reading

I

I love how he's looking for that first sound, /r/. And he has already learned to say the phrase smoothly, which is a main goal in reading phrases. 

So we have progress! And then set-backs! This calls for patience, and going back to the sounds.

(Incidentally, I heard recently that in some of the tribal languages, there is no difference between the and that, which could explain some of this student's difficulty with reading the.)

Phrase cards writing

Lots of effort here, but a reward at the end. :) 

6a sentences - Reading

Because of the level we are starting at, I am using cards to sell out a sentence. These are cards we have been working on throughout the lesson , and now we are stringing them together to make a sentence. 

Then we added the new sight word NOT. Please watch to the end to see his delight at reading the sentence in a negative form. The rewards at this level are small but deep!

6b Sentences - Writing

I definitely help him more than I would generally advise. The idea is that we don't want to feed every word and sound to the student. We give them the responsibility of pulling the words and sounds from the full sentence. And yet. .. here I am, feeding every word to him. Not good. 

But I'm tailoring the lesson to the student, and at this point he needs that. I will pull back each lesson as his skills develop. 

Welcome!

Hey everyone!

Welcome to the VLP blog!

These pages are here to give support and tips to the volunteers here in the trenches with us, doing the hard and important work of teaching adult students to read.

7: Quick Test, and 8: Reading

This student is not ready for the Quick Test yet. We have not even begun using all the sounds in Step 1.1.

When we get to that point I will video the Quick Test.

He is also not at the point where he can read the decodable stories at the end of 1.1. I have been reading very short stories, wildly abridged by me on the fly, that he can understand. Video coming soon!

Troubleshooting: "How to keep my student engaged?"

Question: How can I keep my tired student engaged during the lesson? 

1. Move faster.  

Make each step tighter and quicker.  When flashing cards, turn them as quickly as the student can read them. Work on eliminating your thoughtful pauses as you consider what step or word comes next. 

Troubleshooting: "My student can't get SH and CH straight."

Hearing the difference between the digraph sounds /sh/ and /ch/ is challenging for many dyslexic students. To further complicate, some adult student come from a French-speaking background, in which the CH sounds like /sh/.

Here are some steps to take:

1. Use movements and decibel levels to differentiate between the two sounds. 
For CH, the keyword is chop, with a chopping movement. Make the /ch/ sound with some force, as you make the chopping movement.

Core Strategy: Tapping, Stretching, and Blending

When students encounter an unknown word, they need a positive, effective strategy to decode the word.

No more guessing. No more silently waiting for the word to come. No more (as one student used to do) copying the word while muttering curses at herself. 

The Reading Wars

With 36 million adults in the U.S. reading below the third grade level, we have a problem.