This follows posting 1, here
Barry comes in giggling. I quietly ask him to stop, and he comes and sits down at the table, in his usual position at right-angles to me and on my left, with his mother sitting beside him. I have three main ideas in mind - I want him to distinguish short vowel sounds accurately, to combine/blend consonants at the beginning of words, and to read b and d accurately. Beyond this, I want to engage in conversation on the topic that interests him - bones - and introduce some longer words.
The first ditty we work on contains the words drip and drop. He misreads drip, so I go back to the previous word, rip, then pip, then lip. He does not pronounce the short i sound as clearly as I'd like - it has some e in it, which I've seen before. We practise saying the word, and Barry reads the ditty, hesitantly, but more accurately.
In lesson 2, I'd used the technique adapted from the Portsmouth Sarah Duffen project (now Down Syndrome Educational Trust) of writing some words on cards, saying them, and having Barry give me the word I say. The words are drip, drop, dress and drink. Barry gives me drop when I ask for drip. I put the card back and ask him for drip, which he provides. He gets the others right. This shows that his knowledge of these letters is still developing, but improving. We return to the ditty, which he reads with some hesitation, but accurately. We have to work hard on drink, which I reinforce by reference to pink, link, and sink.
I notice that he only misreads b and d around once in three words, and then always at the beginning of a word. Perhaps not surprising, as b at the end of a word is less frequent than d. I don't offer him b and d together to discriminate, but, as above, reinforce his perceptions and understanding through a series of similar words, which build a neural network and memory.
Barry misreads "sock" as soak once again, and I have to return to lock, tick tock to demonstrate the correct reading. I explain how vowel letters work, and that the word comes from an old French word for voice (Voix, vouielle, modern voyelle, our vowel). For teaching purposes, I call them voice letters, which means exactly the same thing. I write them in this way
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a |
e |
i |
o |
u |
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|
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y |
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w |
I explain that we have 25 or so voice sounds, but only these letters to write them with, so that each one of them can give us more than one sound. This is the main reason why reading in English is difficult - we need to know what the letter is telling us in a particular word, and that has to be learned. I write sky, which he reads accurately, and explain the use of y - we don't like to have words ending in i, and the downstroke on y helps reinforce the fact that the word is ending. Y near the beginning of the word is usually Greek. Back to sock, which Barry reads accurately.
We move to the next ditty, which causes fewer problems, and I take the pressure off with some conversation, though it's linked to the vowel issue. I tap the top of my head, and announce that the bone I'm tapping is the cranium. I ask him to tap the top of his head, which, fortunately enough, is covered with hair. What's the word? Cranium, he says, and his mum explains that it's part of the skull. He's allowed to laugh at my cranium being more visible than his, but not for too long. Does he like football? A little, but he doesn't really understand a lot about it. I give him stadium, underneath cranium, for the longer a sound, and the group of letters ium.
Having had his attention well and truly diverted, Barry returns to the first ditty we read, and reads it fluently and accurately. Result.