Love Learning

My child is struggling to read and may have an audio processing disorder

Q: My daughter has just started in year 2 and her reading has gone backwards from year 1 and her teacher feels she may have a slight audio processing issue. We have just had her tested… awaiting feedback. They say she is a very visual learner. I need help as to how to help her read and pick up her confidence. Can you please assist?

[And later…]

I spoke with my daughter’s speech pathologist today in regards to the … test. Results were patchy. She feels that my daughter may have had a slight audio processing issue underlying as it is her vocabulary or possible interpretation of words that may be her weak point.  My daughter has a very good memory, good concentration; she has always taken her time and tries very hard. I really want to give her all the support and know how to guide her teachers without isolating her to special classes in school, and don't want her falling behind as this is affect her self esteem. The speech pathologist said it has nothing to do with intelligence just the way she learns. 

It’s strange how it wasn't picked up earlier. They say she is relatively quiet in class, she chats away with me and that’s where I sometimes notice that when she talks fast, it is hard for her to locate some words in her word bank to string together.

A: I think every child differs from the next in how they learn, what their strengths are, and in what they  prefer as they learn. Within the traditional school system, many children struggle (ie: don’t perform perfectly) and some are more sensitive than others to the fact that they are not keeping up. Sensing they are not keeping up adds an emotional layer to the difficulty they are already having.

When a child is struggling, I believe in looking at the child first (hence our name) and uncovering the beauty of their design. Next, I believe in tailoring instruction to them. When a child is in school, most of the time that will not happen. Testing will come up first and the child will be evaluated. For sensitive children, this testing is a huge red flag telling them that something is wrong with their brains/abilities. And this is sad.

If there is any way at all you can minimize the focus on testing or on identifying her PROBLEM and focus instead on her strengths, she will gain the confidence and the belief in herself she needs to fuel her success. Having said all that, I would recommend taking a low key approach to working with the SnapWords™ sight word cards: sit in a comfortable place, make it fun, look at the pictures together, etc.

With any order of the 306 SnapWords™ cards, we include a booklet of activities and games you can play to learn and review the words. If your daughter responds to the words like I believe she will, you will have gained some valuable information that will help you help her, AND that will help her understand how she learns best. This is critical because armed with this knowledge, she will be able to help herself learn (like I did for myself all the way through school and graduate school).

As far as audio sound processing… if your daughter is a visual/right-brain-dominant learner, she will NOT be best at verbal linguistic skills. This means she will struggle at times to find words that match the pictures she is making in her head. These people (and I am one of them so I speak from firsthand knowledge) THINK in pictures. Sometimes it is easy to communicate our thoughts, but when we are attempting to put into words what we see in our heads as an image, immediately some difficulties arise:

1.  What do I communicate first? In an image there is no start and finish like there is when someone thinks in words.

2.  The expression “Words fail me” applies very well. Images are so vivid – so how do I find words to adequately express what I see?

3.  I am seeing the whole thing at one time and words are not that way. Words come out in a line, or a sequence, and so for someone like me, keeping the sequence requires thought and practice and patience on the part of the listener.

If you can share with your daughter and her teacher, etc., that she is a picture thinker, NOT disabled in any way, this will help. I helped myself even in grad school by organizing my thoughts on paper using crude little drawings to show the various parts of my mental image. I could then organize the information in a sequence that I could put into words. I recall also that the more deeply I felt something, the more my words failed me. So if your daughter is under stress, her word retrieval will diminish. She can chat away with you because she obviously feels at home and safe.

Even dyslexic students can succeed if they are allowed to:

1.  See the whole (like we do with our SnapWords™).

2.  Use images to help them remember learning concepts.

Enlist your daughter’s help as you learn what helps her the most. If she responds to the images in the SnapWords™ cards, point out that images help her because she thinks in pictures. This is NOT a disability. This is a gift! So for the rest of her life, she can draw little pictures to help her remember material that is communicated via words.

Q: Do you have any sight word worksheets or games to play to reinforce sight words?

A: In general, I am not a huge fan of “worksheets.” Having said that, however, all paper and pencil activities are not bad! Games and other such activities are wonderful for teaching and reinforcing reading concepts. Any time we can use a game to teach, the better! Part of the reason this is true is that the child will anticipate learning with interest rather than dreading it, but also if the child is playing a game or participating in an activity, she will be an active learner. She won’t have the opportunity to just sit and let others around her participate.

An amazing resource to use along with our sight word picture cards is The Reading Teacher’s Encyclopedia. We call it an encyclopedia because it is packed full of games and activities to use while you teach the sight words. Best of all, it includes all the most important elements of reading: fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, phonics, phonemic awareness, and writing. Find out more information about this resource now! 

In fact, if you use SnapWords™ (sight word picture cards), The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns, and the Encyclopedia all together, you will be taking care of learning sight words, learning phonics and spelling, and the other elements of reading and writing, including comprehension, phonemic awareness, etc.

Finally, please take advantage of all the information, how-to’s, and activity ideas found here on our blog. Browse by topic by choosing a category from the left. And if you have specific comments or questions, leave a comment or email me at sarah(at)child-1st(dot)com. Let’s all keep on helping our children love learning!

Q: Do you have tips for teaching children who learn words but don't spell them correctly on tests or when writing?

A: I have heard this comment more times than I could possibly tell. The very best way to teach words and have that learning transfer into USE is to use the SnapWords™ (sight word picture cards) with your child. The reason is that as you show a child the card and let him really look at it, talking about the images just like you would as you read him a picture book,  his brain actually snaps a picture of the word complete with image. As you talk about what is going on, he is also associating the meaning of the word (comprehension help!) as he learns to recognize the word in print.

To transfer that to writing, I would suggest:

1. Have him look at a word and study the picture, noticing details.
2. Turn the card over for him to see the plain word.
3. Read him the sentence on the back.
4. Have him do the body motion you find on the back of the card.
5. Turn the card back over to the front and tell him you want to play a game.
6. Say, "Look at the picture again and then close your eyes."
7. "Do you see the picture in your head?"
8. Have him open his eyes and see if he can write on paper what he saw in his head.

If you do this activity on a regular basis, the child will learn to rely more and more heavily on his powerful sense of visualization.

Following is another tremendous help that I have used with students with great success; it helps with spelling words correctly in writing.

After introducing sight words a few minutes a day, consider teaching your child the construction of words using The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns.

This book is leveled and will teach all the sound spelling from K through adult words, but it uses a fun format of cartoons and humor; children and young people love lessons in this format. If you teach the sight words and then follow the format and the sequence that is suggested in the book, you will help your child soar in reading in about 35 minutes a day!

Q: Do you have any tips for teaching phonics concepts to struggling readers?

A: Phonics rules fall squarely into left-brained territory which is difficult for right-brain dominant children, many of whom struggle with reading as a result. How do we get around that? We use right-brained elements to teach spelling and phonics. This is not a crutch! Far  from it! What we do when we link left-brained elements to right-brained strategies is that we strengthen the communication between the hemispheres in the brain and we help strengthen a child’s abilities in working within their areas of weakness! When I taught school, I used right-brained strategies with ALL my students because those left-brainers needed the depth of meaning they acquired from the right-brained strategies we used. This helped them with meaning and comprehension even if they were not struggling to recognize words as they read. And, of course, including right-brained strategies helped those students who naturally rely more on their right hemisphere.

A couple of the materials I developed in my classroom to reach both left- and right-brained learners include the SnapWords™ sight word cards and The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns. Use these two resources together: introduce sight words first, then add a lesson from the book. Teaching this way will mean that you are covering sight word acquisition AND teaching spelling and phonics, all in a right-brain friendly way.

Q: Do you have tips for teaching English to non-English speakers?

A: I have had personal experience with teaching ESOL children using the sight word picture cards. The children loved them! The visuals helped children who had no English at all figure out what the words said (especially when we added the gestures!). At first when we played our games, many of the students would point to a word and say it in their own language. I thought this was super cool because what it told me was that they understood the meaning of the word! This taught me that the images went a long way in helping prevent comprehension issues. Next, they would start to say the words in English. I had all the words I owned plastered all over the walls of my classroom. The children used them for help as they were writing in English. The wonderful thing was that after they had written using the stylized words as prompts, if I asked them to read me what they wrote, they could! What I learned from this is that the images helped them learn the words, but they could read them in plain text as well.

Q: How do I teach sight words to beginners or teach reading to beginners?

A: I love this topic! New learners are right in the developmental stage in which their right hemisphere is rapidly developing. What this means for us as parents and teachers is that the most efficient way to teach sight words to beginners or to teach reading to beginners is through pictures, body movement, story, metaphor, humor, color and more! This is why Child1st exists as a company. Once we found out how effective these teaching vehicles are with beginners and with other older visual learners, we were on fire! I am passionate about catching these young learners before they experience difficulty and become discouraged.   

Read more about fun and easy ways to teach very young children.

Also check out our kit for teaching reading to K through 1st grade.

Q: How do I help a child who is bright but has poor retention?

A: Many, many visual learners and right-brained learners are very bright. They come across as not bright when they are asked to do things that are very hard for them, such as work with symbols (1,2,3, A, B,C) and formulas and rules--in short, anything that involves a symbol or that requires memorization. The good news is that these children learn very quickly and efficiently when the materials they're using have elements that tie (left-brained) symbols to (right-brained) other elements such as pictures, body movement, story, metaphor, humor, color and more.

Read about how hemispheric dominance affects a child's ability to learn to read.

Check out our SnapWords™ cards that tie left-brained symbols to right-brained images and body movement.

Q: How do I help struggling readers, including visual learners, struggling learners, and those with autism?

A: Our company exists to create materials that will support you as you teach children to read. The reason so many children struggle is because they need something more than the plain words. The evidence that this is true lies in the numbers of children who struggle with reading, don’t enjoy it, can’t read, or can’t make sense out of what they read. This includes many children that have been identified with specific learning challenges such as dyslexia, autism, ADHD, and more.

To learn more about how to help these struggling readers learn sight words, read this short blog post.

Also, check out what this parent said about the difference our SnapWords™ cards made with her non-reader.

Q: My child struggles with the concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. How can I explain these to him?

A: When teaching these concepts to young children, it helps to be as visual and tangible as possible. Until a child has learned firsthand what the passing of time entails, saying, “Tomorrow we will go outside and throw snowballs” means very little.

Download Yesterdaytodaytomorrow to give your child a visual explanation of what these words mean.

1. Use the visual.

Tell your child that the boy and girl in the image are on a picnic today, right now. Point out the clothes the boy is wearing. Talk through what you do at the end of the day. You brush your teeth after dinner, etc., and then you get tucked into bed to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, you put on different clothes (point out the clothes the boy is wearing and remark that they are clean clothes, not the ones he wore before he slept last night.) Everything that tomorrow will contain has not happened yet. It comes right after you wake up from tonight’s sleep!

Go back to the picnic scene. Point out the night time circle that says “I slept last night.” Then draw attention to the circle for yesterday in which the boy is playing with blocks and say, “Yesterday, I played with blocks. I already did that. I wore brown pants and a green shirt. They got kinda dirty, so when I was getting ready for bed, I put those clothes in the dirty clothes basket."

Review: point to the yesterday scene and say “On that day, I played with blocks. I already played with blocks. Then I went to bed and slept. I got up this morning and put on a green shirt and purple shorts and today, I had a picnic!

Tonight I am going to get into my pjs and brush my teeth and go to sleep. Tomorrow when I get out of bed, I want to wear an orange shirt and green pants and play in the snow. I haven’t done it yet, but I will do it tomorrow after I wake up!”

2. Act it out.

Practice over time reviewing the three terms. Instead of throwing the play clothes into the hamper, lay them on a chair until your child gets up in the morning. When he dresses the next morning, say “Today you can wear these clean clothes. Yesterday you wore those. They are dirty, so we need to wash them.” Talk about what your child did yesterday and even let him draw a picture of what he did. Later in the day, have your child pick some clothes to wear tomorrow. He will be wearing what he wore TODAY. Point to the dirty clothes he already wore YESTERDAY, and then identify the clean clothes he is going to wear TOMORROW.

Use terms consistently for each time frame. “I already did” goes well with “yesterday”. “I’m going to” goes well with “tomorrow.”“I am...” goes well with today. 

Q: What should I do about using keywords for complicated spelling patterns if my students struggle with spelling basic words?

A: Basically, ALL children I have taught who struggled with reading also struggled with spelling, and phonics was unfortunately unusable for them. So we bypassed that entirely by focusing on the sounds in words. The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns contains a list of keywords to help children with more advanced spelling patterns. However, you can’t start a child out with more advanced spelling patterns that require a keyword if they are still struggling with CVC words. Don’t even worry about keywords for beginners. Keywords are going to help out a lot with children who are reading but are challenged to read longer words that have various word chunks in them.

For beginners, use the very early lessons in the Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns book that teach short vowel sounds in 3 (or four) letter words. Children with dyslexia will be unable to look at a word and keep the letters in the correct sequence. However they can learn to read and write if you tie the sounds to something tangible and visible such as the fingers on your hand, teach them to rely on listening to the SOUNDS (not letter name) of each letter in the little word, and tie each sound to one finger. The scenario that completes this cycle for them, however, is to have them use whiteboards. See the sequence below.

How to teach:

1.    Identify the word to be studied. Say, for example, FIT.

2.    Hold up three fingers to be a visual, tangible, map for the sounds.

3.    Sound out the word FIT, saying Ffff as you point to the first finger, Iiiii as you point to the next one, and Tttt as you point to the last one.

(The reason this practice is important is that it provides the children with a spatial, visual map that shows them the construction of the word. They can see how many sounds there are and where they fall in the word.)

4.    Next, and this is super important, have your children sound the word with you as you point to the fingers for each sound.

5.    Right away, then, they need to sound FIT again orally as they write each letter on their whiteboards, one sound per letter written.

This simple activity utilizes multiple pathways to the brain, essential for children who struggle to read when taught in traditional ways. Children use spatial / visual abilities as they see the word on your fingermap, they hear themselves sounding out the word as they see the visual map, and when they write as they are sound out the word, they are producing the word from inside their own brains with their mouth and ears directing what they write. It is a very simple activity, but very powerful. This system has worked with children who had not been able to learn to read after years of trying.

Once they learn to listen to sounds, they will be able to apply this skill to more difficult spellings, such as 2-4 letter sounds like the ones outlined in the Sounds Book. They will understand that one sound is sometimes written with multiple letters and that all letter symbols in a word are “used up” in making the sounds for the words.

This practice is one I did daily without fail with all my students, struggling or not. In addition, I used the SnapWords™ sight word cards to give them instant word recognition. They need to understand that the collection of sounds has a meaning, and that you can see the word and not have to sound it out. Put both SnapWords™ sight word cards and The Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns together for a complete teaching cycle for these young children.