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.