December 21, 2024 • 30 mins
Watch episode 76 on Letter Sound Blending - https://youtu.be/MU2t1DHD8VM?si=30GAWCGO6Xxnnt8N.
TD Flenaugh discusses structured literacy, a method aligned with the science of reading, aimed at solving reading issues in 95% of children if practiced systematically five days a week.
This episode involves four of the 8 stages of structured literacy: phonological awareness, reviewing letter sounds, letter sound blending (decoding) , and encoding (dictation).
TERMS
Phonological awareness focuses on manipulating sounds in words, which includes the highest stage of phonemic awareness.
Phoneme - The smallest unit of sound in a word
Letter-sound blending (decoding) - connecting sounds to letters to sound out words or to read a word using letter and sound rules.
Encoding (dictation) - involves writing words based on their sounds.
Flenaugh emphasizes the importance of not correcting children while they write to avoid discouragement and instead highlighting what they did well. Resources and further support are available at fallingforlearning.com.
T.D. Flenaugh promotes her books, "The R.E.W.R.I.T.E. Method" and "The R.E.W.R.I.T.E. Method Workbook," to help children improve their writing skills - https://fallingforlearning.com/home-9066.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
TD Flenaugh (00:00):
Good afternoon, evening, wherever you are in the
(00:02):
world, this is Falling forLearning Podcast. Today we're
going to talk about readingissues, like, how do we solve
these reading issues that ourstudents have? And today, we're
going to really dig intostructured literacy, which
aligns with the science ofreading. So we're going to
(00:23):
demonstrate four stages of thestructured literacy lesson, and
this approach is going to helpyour child. 95% of the kids, be
able to read well and write wellif it's done systematically and
it's done in you know,regularly, five days a week, and
(00:44):
so let's get into it. Hi. Thankyou so much for joining the
Falling for Learning Podcast. Wehave this podcast to help
parents and caregivers withhaving the resources, strategies
and tools needed to make surethat their children are on track
for learning and to stay ontrack for success.
(01:06):
Adjustments need to be made.
Okay? So here we are. I have myhandy dandy, you know, what do
you call this post-it postersize, right? So we're going to
get into the science of reading,specifically the structured
literacy approach. Now, if youmissed my last video that really
(01:28):
focuses in on letter soundblending, then it's going to be
linked in the show notes. Somake sure that you, you know,
follow that up. But this isgoing to start with something
called phonological awareness.
Now, phonological awarenessstrictly, strictly focuses on
(01:49):
listening to the sounds andwords. So phonological
awareness, we're little wonkyhere. Let me sit down for this
one. Actually, okay, so this sojust to let you know,
phonological awareness has to dowith being able to hear and move
around or manipulate the soundsin words, phonological awareness
(02:14):
is this huge type of umbrellathat covers word level, um
phonological awareness, to beable to hear the sound and
words. It also follows theability to break apart word
parts, so if we're and it alsohas to do with syllables, and
(02:41):
then it has to do with onset andrhyme. So that's the beginning
sound in the word, and then therest of it, being able to split
that up and hear the differentparts. And also the very top of
that is phonemic awareness,which has to do with being able
to hear the individual sounds.
Phoneme is the smallest amountof sound in a word. So I'm going
(03:03):
to start with phonemicawareness, giving you the
example. So I just listed it.
Now I'm going to give you theexamples. So if I ask you to
break apart the word cat intoits individual sounds, or
phonemes the smallest sound itwould be at cat. So those are
(03:27):
all the individual sounds incat, the smallest amount of
sounds at cat, okay, so that isthe highest level, and that
ability to hear and move aroundsounds and words is a very
strong predictor about whetheror not your child can read. Do
(03:50):
the letter sound blending right?
Notice, I'm not using Lennyletters, because this is the
precursor for that. Veryclearly, I want you to know that
you're not going to use this inisolation. If you have the kids
blend sounds, you know, withoutletters, and just say, dot, dot,
dot, and then you're like, Okay,I taught reading. Nope. You
(04:15):
gotta do the rest of it. Sostructured literacy begins with
phonemic awareness. But again,if your child is not ready for
phonemic awareness, they're notable to break apart the sounds
in the word cat at they're notable to do that. You may take a
step backward and then have themjust give you the first sound
(04:38):
and and then the rest of theword. So that's the onset in
rhyme. And rhyme, in this case,does not mean, like rhyming
words, that's another level. Sorhyme is just r, i, m, e, the
rest of the sounds. So these,again, these vocabulary words
are in the show notes, just sothat you would understand. What
(04:58):
I'm saying, and it's not toolike above your head or, you
know, I have extensive trainingin it, and that's fine. And of
course, there's an opportunityfor you to work with me. If you
need more support with this,with your kids or your students,
I'll be glad to help you. Butthese is, you know, just an
introduction to get you to knowso onset and rhyme would be at,
(05:20):
so the first sound is in cat,and the rest of it is at, right?
So that's the rhyme, the rest ofit, the rest of the sounds,
okay? And if they're not able todo that, you may need to break
it down into the word parts, youknow, or syllables, right? So I
(05:42):
just made a distinction betweenword parts and syllables,
because word parts, if you have,for example, a compound word,
two words put together, such ascatnip, there's cat and there's
nip catnip, you put it togetherso that first so a level down
right from onset and rhyme,right? If you can't do all the
(06:05):
sounds together, would be thenyou move down to onset and
rhyme. And if you aren't able todo that, then you can move down
to, if your child's not able todo that, move down to word
parts. So if I have the word catnip, and I'll say the word
catnip real quick, and then theycould break it down into the
different parts cat and nipright two parts. And that is a
(06:29):
way to help them. Gotta helpmove them up to where they're
able to hear the very smallestsounds, the phonemes and words.
So there is more to this. Andagain, I will do more videos and
even link some articles so thatyou could know more about that.
But that is one way to make surethat your child understands, you
(06:49):
know, they're able to fill inthose missing gaps that are not
able allowing them to be able tosound outward. Sometimes kids
can't sound out words, and it'sbecause they can't even hear the
sounds and words. And that iswhere we do word play and
different activities like thatto help solve that problem. And
again, it's not taught inisolation. You do these
(07:13):
activities. So I will give youthree words so you can see what
it looks like for students, Iwould give them a model, okay? I
want you to break down thesounds and words. And the reason
why we do this, and I explainedto my students, why is because
it helps us to hear theindividual sounds and words, and
(07:33):
later on, when we're connectingit with letters, it's going to
help us with our spelling. It'sgoing to help us with our
reading. Okay, so the first wordis cat, and you're going to
watch me all the sounds of theword cat, and I do a finger
stretch cat. Now, when I do itfor my students, I do it
backwards. I'm looking at myfingers this way. They're doing,
(07:56):
they're they're going from rightto left. But when they're
looking at me and facing me,they go left to right. So that's
why I do it, like backwards, sothat the way they see it is from
right to left, like the way thatthe way we write. Okay, I'm
saying right to left, left toright, you know what I mean, the
way that we write. Um, so thenext thing that you're going to
(08:20):
do, now that I've done it withthem or shown them what to do,
they did all the sounds. Now Igive them words, and they're
going to do it. And again, whenwe're talking to kids, you want
to stay in a you know, whenearly readers, you want to stay
in the same type of sound andwords. So today, if I'm going to
focus in on Ah, words with thesound ah. So my first word is
(08:44):
taught the little tot ran aroundthe playground. So, like short
for, you know, for a toddler. Soanyway, um, there's also tater
tots. But anyway, so taught, andthey give me the sounds, and we
do it together. My voice is init. Taught, right? And so then
(09:04):
eventually we want them doing iton their own. So you give them
the word dot, and then theycould say the dot. And again,
we're not using letter sounds.
We're not using letter soundsyet. No letters. That's the next
(09:25):
step. So another way to do this,so this is where I gave them the
word, and then they broke downthe word, and that segmentation
again, phoneme segmentation, orbreaking it down. The other way
that you could do it is you givethem all the sounds spread
apart, and they say it fast intoone word. So if I tell them the
(09:48):
word, so, give me the word ah,and they're able to say rot,
right? Or I'm. Going to give youthe sounds, ooh, ah, and they
could say lot. So that, orthose, are two sides of phonemic
(10:09):
awareness, where I give them theword, they break down the word
or segment it. I give them theindividual sounds in one word,
and they blend those soundstogether. So I you will hear me
saying, blend a lot. There isphonemic, you know, phonemic
awareness blending, right? SoI'm not using any letters. I'm
(10:30):
just using the sounds. It's justmy voice. Okay, so let's get
into the second part of this iswhere we actually are using
cards. So we're using cards toreinforce the letter sounds so
the so you say, O spells, ah, Fspells. There's the rest of my
(10:57):
letters here. They are, aspells, ah, sales. Ah,
okay, so again, with earlyreaders, you might only be
reviewing some of the words. Ofcourse, your child might be
older or something, so you maywant to, and I said words
earlier, but you may want toreview all of the sounds right?
(11:20):
So C says, I'm gonna make sureit's like going backwards. C
says or, and I like to sayspells, because, again, we're
connecting that later on.
They're going to be using theseskills, these moving around and
listening to the sounds andwords. We're going to be moving
this to letters, and we aremoving it to letters. So I want
(11:41):
to say spells, right? Seespells, alright? So later on the
other part to do with thisstudents, another side of this
is where you give them thesound, and they tell you the
letter, which letter spell,which letter spells? And then
(12:01):
they'll say, C, right. Like,very good. C, what letter
spells, ah. And they'll say, Oh,right. And again, if they don't
know it, you help correct them.
Again. Always Be patient.
They're going to be makingmistakes. Part of the learning
process is making mistakes.
(12:21):
Remind them of this. Keep itlight, keep it fun, alright, but
keep it focused. Okay, alright,so the third part of this,
right? So we did our lettersound blending. I mean, we did
our a sound blending, right?
With no letters. We're going toget into the letter sound
blending now. And so again, youwant to keep everything
connected. Notice words earlierthat I did the oral blending,
(12:45):
like just with the words thesounds using my um, my mouth
articulate those sounds. Nowwe're going to actually use
those same words, or words likeit um, to actually do the letter
sound blending. So I'm going tomove out the way.
(13:09):
I'm a little all over the placetoday, but let me tell you, I'm
going to take a quick break, andthen I'm going to come back into
the letter sound blending.
Gotcha. Okay?
You the United States, 75% ofchildren don't know how to
write. Well, add that to thefact that so many people out
(13:31):
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oppressed and trying to preventthem from telling their story.
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If your child doesn't know howto write, well, I have two books
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(13:53):
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(14:14):
Okay, here we go. So hopefullyit's a little bit more clear, a
little better today, okay, sothan it was at the beginning. So
we have the phonologicalawareness. Was the first step
review letter sounds. So we didthat. Our next part that we're
going to be doing is we're goingto be doing the letter sound
(14:36):
blending. SoSo I have a video that we did in
depth about this one already onour podcast, Episode 75 I
believe it was, but it will bein the show notes. You don't
even have to guess. It'll bethere for you. Alright? So the
next thing for our letter soundblending, we want to make. Sure
(14:58):
we're using those same sounds wewere doing ah sound earlier. So
now we're going to be doing ahsound with words. So the first
word, for example, is.so I'mgoing to not just announce the
word dot. We're going to writethe word, and the kids are going
to give me the sounds and blendit from me. So, so I write down
(15:20):
each letter, and I point to thesound the right. And again, you
always want to do the first one,where you demonstrate what to
do, and then you want them to doit themselves, right? But.so
we're going to blend ittogether. Again, very similar to
(15:43):
the phonological awareness, thephonemic awareness, where we
just gave them the sound andthen they put it together, but
now we're doing the lettersound. So again, you don't do
phonological awareness inisolation and you don't do
letter sound blending inisolation, either they come
together. Okay, alright, so nowthe next word,
(16:12):
lot, lot, right? Again, the goalis more and more, right, to do
it with them. So we do it, wedemonstrate, show them. Model it
for them. We do it with them,right? This is the guided and
then eventually you want them toget to the point that they are
doing it by themselves. So onceyou put it down,
(16:40):
so you would maybe have yourvoice quiet, and they would be
saying, right, right. Andthere's different levels to the
letter sound blending. Andagain, there's more videos that
will come up. And you, ofcourse, you could review the
past episodes to see like thedifferent levels of letter sound
blending. So now we have aletter sound blending. We have
(17:03):
blended these words then again.
You want to make sure that youare reading all the words again,
so we may need to blend itagain, but maybe they remember.
Dot lot, right. Don't besurprised if you have to blend
it again and again, one of theclues that I was saying earlier
is that you may need to stretchthat vowel and hold on to it. If
(17:26):
you hold on to that vowel sound,it'll help them to hear it and
be able to blend it. So that isa challenge for some of the
kids, they're not able to holdon to that blend and or they
don't know to hold on to that,that that sound, and then add
(17:47):
the sound at the end. And sothey're like, they still don't
know the word, right? So thedot, dot, and they'll be able to
hear it. So that is a reallygood strategy for being able to
hear the words. So now that wehave it, remember our next thing
that we want to think about isbeing able to read like a
(18:10):
sentence with the word. Andagain, one of the things that
you would learnis there are some high frequency
words, or sight words. Forexample, the word the it is not
(18:32):
really easily to sound out,especially if they're reading
words like this. That's thelevel they're on, but they need
to memorize it, uh, the the.sothey may know that from here.
And then is, is and is is verytricky, because it makes the
(18:53):
sound is you don't say is, isyou say is, so, you know, and
then red, the red. So, again,this is a consonant, vowel,
consonant, word. These are setsof consonant, vowel, consonants.
So is this? The rule is shortvowels, and they should be able
to the and if they're not ready,again, blending through the
(19:19):
mouth. Dot red. Okay, alright,so these are the parts that we
need to remember about ourstructured literacy. The last
part of the structured literacyapproach is so I usually do this
(19:39):
part on a whiteboard. I erasethe whiteboard, or do totally
different words, right? And thenwe actually have the kids
writing down the words. So Iwill come and sit down again for
this. You go back to havingkids. Is with the letters, you
know, with paper or whiteboardsin front of them. And then you
(20:04):
say to them, okay, you're nowgoing to write down the word
dot. And of course, you're notholding the word up here for
them, right, like it's up therefor you, but you're going to
erase it, or cover it up, orwhatever. And then you help
them, just like you did withphonemic awareness, you have
them look at your mouth asyou're articulating the sounds,
(20:24):
and you're like, dot, what's thefirst sound in dot? Next sound
in dot, and what letter spellsthe ah, I mean, D, right? And
then ah is the next sound, andwhat letter spells that, and
it's, ah, you know, ah. The nextsound, what? Letter o, and then.
And so they were do it. And soagain, like this, you're going
(20:47):
to go ahead and see how you'regoing to write it. So they would
say you. And again, you couldshow them the first time, D,
when they sound you hear in theword dot, we'll move this out
the way. And they say, Whatletter is that? What's letter
(21:09):
spells? I was like, oh. And thendot, what letter is that? And
they're like, T All right. Soagain, all of these skills we
used up here, listening for thesounds and words, reviewing our
letter sounds, doing our lettersound blending, and then, you
know, reading also these words,right? And then also actually
(21:31):
doing what we call encoding. Solet me go ahead and do two more,
and then we're going to go backand label these different parts.
Okay, so the next word is, andagain, I like putting in
nonsense words because theydon't know all of the words, and
they have a limited vocabularywhen they're young readers. And
(21:54):
so I might say something likethe next word is Mont now Mott
doesn't have a meaning, but wecould still know the rules for
sounding it out. What is thefirst sound you hear? What
letter spells? M, the next soundis, ah, what letters you know
spells? Oh, the next word insound and mot. What letter
(22:17):
spells it t, right, so again,you go through this with them,
and the next word is taught. TheLittle tut ran around the
playground. First down is whatletter T, what letter o, and
(22:38):
then taught, we say the word,and you're hearing the kids say
the word, make sure they say it,and then they can hear the
sounds, right? And so we havedot mot taught, and then you go
and check their work. Now thisis what I want to say about
this. Do not, do not edit theirwork while they're doing it.
(23:03):
Like, don't stop them. Ifthey're doing a total wrong
thing, don't stop them say,Okay, let's go, and then after
they're done. So for example, ifthey were wrote like, not,
right, even though you saidMott, you can go back and say,
let's go check our work, and youwrite the word, okay. We should
(23:24):
have.we should have mot and weshould have taught so they know
that they made a mistake. Theycan use a different color or
write it next to it, or erase,depending on what you want to
do, and they're going to makethe correction. Okay, I need to
do not instead. And then Ialways go to the articulation,
(23:46):
because a lot of the problemswith the words and the spelling
has to do with articulation.
They might have said not. Theymay have thought you said not.
So you are always pointing atyour mouth if you're saying in
or if you're saying right? Youwere saying, which letter is
that you know you're you know,curving in your mouth, your
(24:09):
lips, so they know thedifference, and that helps you
to understand what they don'thear. Well, that will help you.
So again, do not say, up, yougot that wrong. Let them write
it and say, Okay, you got thisone right? You got the O and the
T right, but we're missing thatfirst one. So let's go ahead and
(24:31):
fix it and remind them thatmistakes are part of the
learning process. I'm going tosay all the time. I'm going to
remind them you don't want themfeeling bad. This is why kids
don't like to read or write whenthey're making a bunch of
mistakes, and we are making themfeel bad about their mistakes,
or we're nitpicking. Again, I'myou're going to make a conscious
(24:52):
effort to say the positives thatthey're doing. You did a real
good job with this one. You. Youmade Oh, you you got the O and
the T, right? So I'm pointingout what they got, right? You
got taught, right? Okay, thisone, let's go back to that
sound. So I said mot, but youhad what letter does in make it
(25:16):
what sound is N spell again, soyou remind them, but again,
focus in first on what they didwell, and then go back and see
about what they did that theyneed to correct, because if they
feel like it's only all bad,then why do I want to do this? I
keep making mistakes. I am notgood at this. I'm not going to
get good at this right? And someof our kids are struggling
(25:39):
readers, and they're older, andmaybe they should be done with
these baby words, as some peoplemay say, but they're not so
wherever they are, you want tomeet them there, and you want to
help build them up. Okay, so I'mgoing to go ahead and review
what we were talking about,because these are very important
things you need to know. So thisis part of structured literacy,
(26:01):
and I'm going to write it here,and it's just four steps.
There's like eight differentsteps in structured literacy. So
you should know that about eightdifferent steps, and we will do
videos, and I even have acourse, and I can give you a
(26:23):
consultation as well to help yourecognize an area of your
child's reading that can beimproved. And all of that
because reading is sofundamental, right? Our kids
need to know how to do it, andif they're not naturally picking
up reading, then it's very hard.
Reading can be like rocketscience, right? There's a lot of
research on the science andreading about how difficult it
(26:44):
can be, and it takes a lot oftraining to kind of diagnose
those issues and to remedy thoseissues. So we have the
phonological awareness. This isjust sounds, manipulating the
sounds and words. Then we havereviewing the letter sound. So
we're literally holding up thecards and asking you what letter
(27:05):
spells this. Writing down aletter that makes them sound
like fish, right? Things likethat, reviewing the letter
sounds right. Number three,we're doing our letter sound
blending, letter sound blending.
So an example would be dot lot,right? And again, how to make
(27:29):
this structure is making surethat we're not just doing any
letters and sounds. But Ifocused in on the short o sound,
right? When you have astruggling reader or a new
reader, it is important that youstay focused on particular
sounds. Now you can spend a weekon all a week on it right, and
(27:50):
then eventually you could do anyshort sound, but again, you're
still working on the CVC words.
These are consonant, vowelconsonants, and they all have
the same sound. Remember, duringthe phonological awareness, I
stuck with the ah sound as I wasdoing it, and that's throughout
they're going to get it, becauseyou are connecting the sounds to
the letters, and then actuallydoing the letter sound blending
(28:13):
is also known as decoding. Andthen when we did the number
four,this is called encoding, and
it's also called dictation. Sopeople use new terms for the
same thing. So just be aware,some people will call it
(28:35):
encoding. Some people call itdictation, and I think some
people even have anotherterminology for it, but these
are four really important parts.
Of course, decoding or lettersound blending is
interchangeable. So veryimportant. Hopefully you have
(28:56):
found your value. If so, please,like, subscribe, do all of those
things and message me if youwant you know some more in depth
information. Are thereparticular types of videos that
you want me to share? I'm herefor it, and we know we can work
together to get children'sreading on track. Okay? Now,
(29:18):
thank you again for joining me.
Make sure today that you dosomething that your future adult
children will thank you forthanks again.
Thanks again for supporting theFalling for Learning Podcast,
new episodes go live everySaturday at 5pm you can watch us
(29:41):
on youtube.com, at falling forlearning, or listen on all major
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fallinginlovewithlearning.comor. We really appreciate you.
(30:01):
Have a wonderful week.
Good afternoon, evening, wherever you are in the
(00:02):
world, this is Falling forLearning Podcast. Today we're
going to talk about readingissues, like, how do we solve
these reading issues that ourstudents have? And today, we're
going to really dig intostructured literacy, which
aligns with the science ofreading. So we're going to
(00:23):
demonstrate four stages of thestructured literacy lesson, and
this approach is going to helpyour child. 95% of the kids, be
able to read well and write wellif it's done systematically and
it's done in you know,regularly, five days a week, and
(00:44):
so let's get into it. Hi. Thankyou so much for joining the
Falling for Learning Podcast. Wehave this podcast to help
parents and caregivers withhaving the resources, strategies
and tools needed to make surethat their children are on track
for learning and to stay ontrack for success.
(01:06):
Adjustments need to be made.
Okay? So here we are. I have myhandy dandy, you know, what do
you call this post-it postersize, right? So we're going to
get into the science of reading,specifically the structured
literacy approach. Now, if youmissed my last video that really
(01:28):
focuses in on letter soundblending, then it's going to be
linked in the show notes. Somake sure that you, you know,
follow that up. But this isgoing to start with something
called phonological awareness.
Now, phonological awarenessstrictly, strictly focuses on
(01:49):
listening to the sounds andwords. So phonological
awareness, we're little wonkyhere. Let me sit down for this
one. Actually, okay, so this sojust to let you know,
phonological awareness has to dowith being able to hear and move
around or manipulate the soundsin words, phonological awareness
(02:14):
is this huge type of umbrellathat covers word level, um
phonological awareness, to beable to hear the sound and
words. It also follows theability to break apart word
parts, so if we're and it alsohas to do with syllables, and
(02:41):
then it has to do with onset andrhyme. So that's the beginning
sound in the word, and then therest of it, being able to split
that up and hear the differentparts. And also the very top of
that is phonemic awareness,which has to do with being able
to hear the individual sounds.
Phoneme is the smallest amountof sound in a word. So I'm going
(03:03):
to start with phonemicawareness, giving you the
example. So I just listed it.
Now I'm going to give you theexamples. So if I ask you to
break apart the word cat intoits individual sounds, or
phonemes the smallest sound itwould be at cat. So those are
(03:27):
all the individual sounds incat, the smallest amount of
sounds at cat, okay, so that isthe highest level, and that
ability to hear and move aroundsounds and words is a very
strong predictor about whetheror not your child can read. Do
(03:50):
the letter sound blending right?
Notice, I'm not using Lennyletters, because this is the
precursor for that. Veryclearly, I want you to know that
you're not going to use this inisolation. If you have the kids
blend sounds, you know, withoutletters, and just say, dot, dot,
dot, and then you're like, Okay,I taught reading. Nope. You
(04:15):
gotta do the rest of it. Sostructured literacy begins with
phonemic awareness. But again,if your child is not ready for
phonemic awareness, they're notable to break apart the sounds
in the word cat at they're notable to do that. You may take a
step backward and then have themjust give you the first sound
(04:38):
and and then the rest of theword. So that's the onset in
rhyme. And rhyme, in this case,does not mean, like rhyming
words, that's another level. Sorhyme is just r, i, m, e, the
rest of the sounds. So these,again, these vocabulary words
are in the show notes, just sothat you would understand. What
(04:58):
I'm saying, and it's not toolike above your head or, you
know, I have extensive trainingin it, and that's fine. And of
course, there's an opportunityfor you to work with me. If you
need more support with this,with your kids or your students,
I'll be glad to help you. Butthese is, you know, just an
introduction to get you to knowso onset and rhyme would be at,
(05:20):
so the first sound is in cat,and the rest of it is at, right?
So that's the rhyme, the rest ofit, the rest of the sounds,
okay? And if they're not able todo that, you may need to break
it down into the word parts, youknow, or syllables, right? So I
(05:42):
just made a distinction betweenword parts and syllables,
because word parts, if you have,for example, a compound word,
two words put together, such ascatnip, there's cat and there's
nip catnip, you put it togetherso that first so a level down
right from onset and rhyme,right? If you can't do all the
(06:05):
sounds together, would be thenyou move down to onset and
rhyme. And if you aren't able todo that, then you can move down
to, if your child's not able todo that, move down to word
parts. So if I have the word catnip, and I'll say the word
catnip real quick, and then theycould break it down into the
different parts cat and nipright two parts. And that is a
(06:29):
way to help them. Gotta helpmove them up to where they're
able to hear the very smallestsounds, the phonemes and words.
So there is more to this. Andagain, I will do more videos and
even link some articles so thatyou could know more about that.
But that is one way to make surethat your child understands, you
(06:49):
know, they're able to fill inthose missing gaps that are not
able allowing them to be able tosound outward. Sometimes kids
can't sound out words, and it'sbecause they can't even hear the
sounds and words. And that iswhere we do word play and
different activities like thatto help solve that problem. And
again, it's not taught inisolation. You do these
(07:13):
activities. So I will give youthree words so you can see what
it looks like for students, Iwould give them a model, okay? I
want you to break down thesounds and words. And the reason
why we do this, and I explainedto my students, why is because
it helps us to hear theindividual sounds and words, and
(07:33):
later on, when we're connectingit with letters, it's going to
help us with our spelling. It'sgoing to help us with our
reading. Okay, so the first wordis cat, and you're going to
watch me all the sounds of theword cat, and I do a finger
stretch cat. Now, when I do itfor my students, I do it
backwards. I'm looking at myfingers this way. They're doing,
(07:56):
they're they're going from rightto left. But when they're
looking at me and facing me,they go left to right. So that's
why I do it, like backwards, sothat the way they see it is from
right to left, like the way thatthe way we write. Okay, I'm
saying right to left, left toright, you know what I mean, the
way that we write. Um, so thenext thing that you're going to
(08:20):
do, now that I've done it withthem or shown them what to do,
they did all the sounds. Now Igive them words, and they're
going to do it. And again, whenwe're talking to kids, you want
to stay in a you know, whenearly readers, you want to stay
in the same type of sound andwords. So today, if I'm going to
focus in on Ah, words with thesound ah. So my first word is
(08:44):
taught the little tot ran aroundthe playground. So, like short
for, you know, for a toddler. Soanyway, um, there's also tater
tots. But anyway, so taught, andthey give me the sounds, and we
do it together. My voice is init. Taught, right? And so then
(09:04):
eventually we want them doing iton their own. So you give them
the word dot, and then theycould say the dot. And again,
we're not using letter sounds.
We're not using letter soundsyet. No letters. That's the next
(09:25):
step. So another way to do this,so this is where I gave them the
word, and then they broke downthe word, and that segmentation
again, phoneme segmentation, orbreaking it down. The other way
that you could do it is you givethem all the sounds spread
apart, and they say it fast intoone word. So if I tell them the
(09:48):
word, so, give me the word ah,and they're able to say rot,
right? Or I'm. Going to give youthe sounds, ooh, ah, and they
could say lot. So that, orthose, are two sides of phonemic
(10:09):
awareness, where I give them theword, they break down the word
or segment it. I give them theindividual sounds in one word,
and they blend those soundstogether. So I you will hear me
saying, blend a lot. There isphonemic, you know, phonemic
awareness blending, right? SoI'm not using any letters. I'm
(10:30):
just using the sounds. It's justmy voice. Okay, so let's get
into the second part of this iswhere we actually are using
cards. So we're using cards toreinforce the letter sounds so
the so you say, O spells, ah, Fspells. There's the rest of my
(10:57):
letters here. They are, aspells, ah, sales. Ah,
okay, so again, with earlyreaders, you might only be
reviewing some of the words. Ofcourse, your child might be
older or something, so you maywant to, and I said words
earlier, but you may want toreview all of the sounds right?
(11:20):
So C says, I'm gonna make sureit's like going backwards. C
says or, and I like to sayspells, because, again, we're
connecting that later on.
They're going to be using theseskills, these moving around and
listening to the sounds andwords. We're going to be moving
this to letters, and we aremoving it to letters. So I want
(11:41):
to say spells, right? Seespells, alright? So later on the
other part to do with thisstudents, another side of this
is where you give them thesound, and they tell you the
letter, which letter spell,which letter spells? And then
(12:01):
they'll say, C, right. Like,very good. C, what letter
spells, ah. And they'll say, Oh,right. And again, if they don't
know it, you help correct them.
Again. Always Be patient.
They're going to be makingmistakes. Part of the learning
process is making mistakes.
(12:21):
Remind them of this. Keep itlight, keep it fun, alright, but
keep it focused. Okay, alright,so the third part of this,
right? So we did our lettersound blending. I mean, we did
our a sound blending, right?
With no letters. We're going toget into the letter sound
blending now. And so again, youwant to keep everything
connected. Notice words earlierthat I did the oral blending,
(12:45):
like just with the words thesounds using my um, my mouth
articulate those sounds. Nowwe're going to actually use
those same words, or words likeit um, to actually do the letter
sound blending. So I'm going tomove out the way.
(13:09):
I'm a little all over the placetoday, but let me tell you, I'm
going to take a quick break, andthen I'm going to come back into
the letter sound blending.
Gotcha. Okay?
You the United States, 75% ofchildren don't know how to
write. Well, add that to thefact that so many people out
(13:31):
there are trying to silence thevoices of those who have been
oppressed and trying to preventthem from telling their story.
Who's going to tell your story?
If your child doesn't know howto write, well, I have two books
to address this issue, therewrite method and the rewrite
method workbook. We tend to makesure that parents know what to
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(13:53):
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(14:14):
Okay, here we go. So hopefullyit's a little bit more clear, a
little better today, okay, sothan it was at the beginning. So
we have the phonologicalawareness. Was the first step
review letter sounds. So we didthat. Our next part that we're
going to be doing is we're goingto be doing the letter sound
(14:36):
blending. SoSo I have a video that we did in
depth about this one already onour podcast, Episode 75 I
believe it was, but it will bein the show notes. You don't
even have to guess. It'll bethere for you. Alright? So the
next thing for our letter soundblending, we want to make. Sure
(14:58):
we're using those same sounds wewere doing ah sound earlier. So
now we're going to be doing ahsound with words. So the first
word, for example, is.so I'mgoing to not just announce the
word dot. We're going to writethe word, and the kids are going
to give me the sounds and blendit from me. So, so I write down
(15:20):
each letter, and I point to thesound the right. And again, you
always want to do the first one,where you demonstrate what to
do, and then you want them to doit themselves, right? But.so
we're going to blend ittogether. Again, very similar to
(15:43):
the phonological awareness, thephonemic awareness, where we
just gave them the sound andthen they put it together, but
now we're doing the lettersound. So again, you don't do
phonological awareness inisolation and you don't do
letter sound blending inisolation, either they come
together. Okay, alright, so nowthe next word,
(16:12):
lot, lot, right? Again, the goalis more and more, right, to do
it with them. So we do it, wedemonstrate, show them. Model it
for them. We do it with them,right? This is the guided and
then eventually you want them toget to the point that they are
doing it by themselves. So onceyou put it down,
(16:40):
so you would maybe have yourvoice quiet, and they would be
saying, right, right. Andthere's different levels to the
letter sound blending. Andagain, there's more videos that
will come up. And you, ofcourse, you could review the
past episodes to see like thedifferent levels of letter sound
blending. So now we have aletter sound blending. We have
(17:03):
blended these words then again.
You want to make sure that youare reading all the words again,
so we may need to blend itagain, but maybe they remember.
Dot lot, right. Don't besurprised if you have to blend
it again and again, one of theclues that I was saying earlier
is that you may need to stretchthat vowel and hold on to it. If
(17:26):
you hold on to that vowel sound,it'll help them to hear it and
be able to blend it. So that isa challenge for some of the
kids, they're not able to holdon to that blend and or they
don't know to hold on to that,that that sound, and then add
(17:47):
the sound at the end. And sothey're like, they still don't
know the word, right? So thedot, dot, and they'll be able to
hear it. So that is a reallygood strategy for being able to
hear the words. So now that wehave it, remember our next thing
that we want to think about isbeing able to read like a
(18:10):
sentence with the word. Andagain, one of the things that
you would learnis there are some high frequency
words, or sight words. Forexample, the word the it is not
(18:32):
really easily to sound out,especially if they're reading
words like this. That's thelevel they're on, but they need
to memorize it, uh, the the.sothey may know that from here.
And then is, is and is is verytricky, because it makes the
(18:53):
sound is you don't say is, isyou say is, so, you know, and
then red, the red. So, again,this is a consonant, vowel,
consonant, word. These are setsof consonant, vowel, consonants.
So is this? The rule is shortvowels, and they should be able
to the and if they're not ready,again, blending through the
(19:19):
mouth. Dot red. Okay, alright,so these are the parts that we
need to remember about ourstructured literacy. The last
part of the structured literacyapproach is so I usually do this
(19:39):
part on a whiteboard. I erasethe whiteboard, or do totally
different words, right? And thenwe actually have the kids
writing down the words. So Iwill come and sit down again for
this. You go back to havingkids. Is with the letters, you
know, with paper or whiteboardsin front of them. And then you
(20:04):
say to them, okay, you're nowgoing to write down the word
dot. And of course, you're notholding the word up here for
them, right, like it's up therefor you, but you're going to
erase it, or cover it up, orwhatever. And then you help
them, just like you did withphonemic awareness, you have
them look at your mouth asyou're articulating the sounds,
(20:24):
and you're like, dot, what's thefirst sound in dot? Next sound
in dot, and what letter spellsthe ah, I mean, D, right? And
then ah is the next sound, andwhat letter spells that, and
it's, ah, you know, ah. The nextsound, what? Letter o, and then.
And so they were do it. And soagain, like this, you're going
(20:47):
to go ahead and see how you'regoing to write it. So they would
say you. And again, you couldshow them the first time, D,
when they sound you hear in theword dot, we'll move this out
the way. And they say, Whatletter is that? What's letter
(21:09):
spells? I was like, oh. And thendot, what letter is that? And
they're like, T All right. Soagain, all of these skills we
used up here, listening for thesounds and words, reviewing our
letter sounds, doing our lettersound blending, and then, you
know, reading also these words,right? And then also actually
(21:31):
doing what we call encoding. Solet me go ahead and do two more,
and then we're going to go backand label these different parts.
Okay, so the next word is, andagain, I like putting in
nonsense words because theydon't know all of the words, and
they have a limited vocabularywhen they're young readers. And
(21:54):
so I might say something likethe next word is Mont now Mott
doesn't have a meaning, but wecould still know the rules for
sounding it out. What is thefirst sound you hear? What
letter spells? M, the next soundis, ah, what letters you know
spells? Oh, the next word insound and mot. What letter
(22:17):
spells it t, right, so again,you go through this with them,
and the next word is taught. TheLittle tut ran around the
playground. First down is whatletter T, what letter o, and
(22:38):
then taught, we say the word,and you're hearing the kids say
the word, make sure they say it,and then they can hear the
sounds, right? And so we havedot mot taught, and then you go
and check their work. Now thisis what I want to say about
this. Do not, do not edit theirwork while they're doing it.
(23:03):
Like, don't stop them. Ifthey're doing a total wrong
thing, don't stop them say,Okay, let's go, and then after
they're done. So for example, ifthey were wrote like, not,
right, even though you saidMott, you can go back and say,
let's go check our work, and youwrite the word, okay. We should
(23:24):
have.we should have mot and weshould have taught so they know
that they made a mistake. Theycan use a different color or
write it next to it, or erase,depending on what you want to
do, and they're going to makethe correction. Okay, I need to
do not instead. And then Ialways go to the articulation,
(23:46):
because a lot of the problemswith the words and the spelling
has to do with articulation.
They might have said not. Theymay have thought you said not.
So you are always pointing atyour mouth if you're saying in
or if you're saying right? Youwere saying, which letter is
that you know you're you know,curving in your mouth, your
(24:09):
lips, so they know thedifference, and that helps you
to understand what they don'thear. Well, that will help you.
So again, do not say, up, yougot that wrong. Let them write
it and say, Okay, you got thisone right? You got the O and the
T right, but we're missing thatfirst one. So let's go ahead and
(24:31):
fix it and remind them thatmistakes are part of the
learning process. I'm going tosay all the time. I'm going to
remind them you don't want themfeeling bad. This is why kids
don't like to read or write whenthey're making a bunch of
mistakes, and we are making themfeel bad about their mistakes,
or we're nitpicking. Again, I'myou're going to make a conscious
(24:52):
effort to say the positives thatthey're doing. You did a real
good job with this one. You. Youmade Oh, you you got the O and
the T, right? So I'm pointingout what they got, right? You
got taught, right? Okay, thisone, let's go back to that
sound. So I said mot, but youhad what letter does in make it
(25:16):
what sound is N spell again, soyou remind them, but again,
focus in first on what they didwell, and then go back and see
about what they did that theyneed to correct, because if they
feel like it's only all bad,then why do I want to do this? I
keep making mistakes. I am notgood at this. I'm not going to
get good at this right? And someof our kids are struggling
(25:39):
readers, and they're older, andmaybe they should be done with
these baby words, as some peoplemay say, but they're not so
wherever they are, you want tomeet them there, and you want to
help build them up. Okay, so I'mgoing to go ahead and review
what we were talking about,because these are very important
things you need to know. So thisis part of structured literacy,
(26:01):
and I'm going to write it here,and it's just four steps.
There's like eight differentsteps in structured literacy. So
you should know that about eightdifferent steps, and we will do
videos, and I even have acourse, and I can give you a
(26:23):
consultation as well to help yourecognize an area of your
child's reading that can beimproved. And all of that
because reading is sofundamental, right? Our kids
need to know how to do it, andif they're not naturally picking
up reading, then it's very hard.
Reading can be like rocketscience, right? There's a lot of
research on the science andreading about how difficult it
(26:44):
can be, and it takes a lot oftraining to kind of diagnose
those issues and to remedy thoseissues. So we have the
phonological awareness. This isjust sounds, manipulating the
sounds and words. Then we havereviewing the letter sound. So
we're literally holding up thecards and asking you what letter
(27:05):
spells this. Writing down aletter that makes them sound
like fish, right? Things likethat, reviewing the letter
sounds right. Number three,we're doing our letter sound
blending, letter sound blending.
So an example would be dot lot,right? And again, how to make
(27:29):
this structure is making surethat we're not just doing any
letters and sounds. But Ifocused in on the short o sound,
right? When you have astruggling reader or a new
reader, it is important that youstay focused on particular
sounds. Now you can spend a weekon all a week on it right, and
(27:50):
then eventually you could do anyshort sound, but again, you're
still working on the CVC words.
These are consonant, vowelconsonants, and they all have
the same sound. Remember, duringthe phonological awareness, I
stuck with the ah sound as I wasdoing it, and that's throughout
they're going to get it, becauseyou are connecting the sounds to
the letters, and then actuallydoing the letter sound blending
(28:13):
is also known as decoding. Andthen when we did the number
four,this is called encoding, and
it's also called dictation. Sopeople use new terms for the
same thing. So just be aware,some people will call it
(28:35):
encoding. Some people call itdictation, and I think some
people even have anotherterminology for it, but these
are four really important parts.
Of course, decoding or lettersound blending is
interchangeable. So veryimportant. Hopefully you have
(28:56):
found your value. If so, please,like, subscribe, do all of those
things and message me if youwant you know some more in depth
information. Are thereparticular types of videos that
you want me to share? I'm herefor it, and we know we can work
together to get children'sreading on track. Okay? Now,
(29:18):
thank you again for joining me.
Make sure today that you dosomething that your future adult
children will thank you forthanks again.
Thanks again for supporting theFalling for Learning Podcast,
new episodes go live everySaturday at 5pm you can watch us
(29:41):
on youtube.com, at falling forlearning, or listen on all major
podcast platforms such as Apple,Google, Audible, Spotify and
much more for more resources,visit
fallinginlovewithlearning.comor. We really appreciate you.
(30:01):
Have a wonderful week.
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