In 2007, as part of the Primary National Strategy, the DfES introduced the 'Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics' document, a guidance to the teaching of phonics in the foundation Stage and Key stage 1. Within this programme there were five phases. Phase One paves the way for systematic teaching of phonics and phases two to six develop:
• Knowledge of grapheme - phoneme correspondence
• Skills of blending and segmenting with letters and sounds
• Reading of high frequency words
Phase 1 is all about phonological awareness. What is phonological awareness? Phonological awareness is conscious sensitivity to the sound structure of language. It is the awareness of the units of sounds - which may be phonemes - but may be rimes, onsets or syllables. Children who have good phonological awareness skills can identify that when the teacher says b-a-t that the word is 'bat'; they can say all the sounds in the spoken word 'dog' and know that if the last sound in the word 'cart' is removed the word would then change to 'car'.
For a dyslexic learner this is a skill they natural find very difficult due to their neurodiversity. This often is the start of finding spelling and reading difficult. For any learner starting to learn a language the skill of hearing individual units of sound and then being able to manipulate them is crucial. However, this stage is often missed and the teaching of letters and phonemes are started to be taught often too early. For a dyslexic learner it is important to develop these skills.
The main areas to focus on are:
· Recognising sounds,
• Syllable awareness,
• Onset and rime,
• Rhyme,
• Initial sounds.
One of these skills above should be incorporated into each specialist dyslexia lesson, helping to develop these skills. It also shows dyslexic learners that language can be fun and playful, not just a constant struggle to spell words correctly.
There are so many ways you can start to support children with tuning into different sounds and thinking about how they fit together. You can start by playing games with general sounds around them and distinguishing between these sounds. This could be taking your child on a sound walk. The ability to attend to and distinguish between both environmental and speech sounds from one another is important as it provides the basis for the development of spoken language and early literacy. Learning to distinguish one environmental sound from another helps to develop understanding of the crucial concepts ‘same/different’, as well as the ability to hear differences and label and identify them.
When working with a dyslexic learner an important skill is being able to hear if a particular sound is at the beginning, middle or end of a word. This helps a child to think about where a sound is in a word and is the beginning of segmenting for spelling and often called oral segmenting.
The next stage would be to distinguish between speech sounds and other environmental sounds. This could be in the form of a barrier game. For example, ask your child to stand just outside of sight and they have to distinguish if a sound is made by your voice or something else in the room. This helps them to hear the different between speech sounds and other sounds.
Then move onto playing with words and language, clapping the syllable in a word, finding words that rhyme or have the same first sound (alliteration). Making it as fun as possible. When playing with language, songs and story books can be a really powerful tool. A simple song like ‘Old McDonald’ plays with language within the rhyme and children have to be able to distinguish between the sounds to sing it correctly. For example, ‘Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.’
There are a range of texts which play with language and stimulates a child’s interest in language and sounds. Here is a resource which has been developed to recommend books to support these phonological awareness skills. https://clpe.org.uk/sites/default/files/Phonics%20booklist.%20-%20rebranded.pdf
Continue to help your young learner enjoy playing with and listening to language. Have fun with language without having to sit down and spell anything! As developing this skill is a passion of mine I have developed a pack of cards with games and activities to support you and your child develop this critical skill. Email me for details.
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