Lesson 4, below, involved slow progress, with my attention focused on having Barry pay more attention to the information from letters as he read. This lesson, with both parents present, began very strongly indeed. Barry read the ditty he'd had to work hard on last time - it contained drip and drop in various permuations - quickly and confidently, with only one slight hesitation on another word. His discrimination between the two voice (vowel) sounds was secure, and this fully justified the time we had taken over it in the last lesson. Barry's mother said he'd been practising. A heap of praise ensued, and Barry asked if he could read the ditty again. He did, and even better this time.
The longer words, cranium and stadium, had not stuck, so we discussed them again, and the reasons for choosing cranium (Barry's interest in the skeleton). We discussed the word, and stadium. We then worked on four more ditties, which involved combinations of letters, ng, and clusters of consonants. Barry had to work on each new combination carefully, with the usual technique of reinforcing each one with other words with the same pattern of letters and sounds at the end. Words we had to work on, or on which Barry hesitated, included long, hunt, and grin. Barry did not know what a grin was, so we discussed different types of smile. The final word in this session was pasta.
More good news, though, was that Barry was talking a lot more, both to his parents and to me. He was still talking as he left and got into the car, and with better annunciation, for example in discussing whether he wanted a hamster or a dog for a pet. Building up his knowledge of letter patterns, in a way similar to the use of worked examples in geometry below, is giving him the confidence that comes from getting things right. All four of us were very happy with the outcome.