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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Reading, numbers and learning differences
Reading is learned from speech towards print, so a border running A, B, C tells a child very little about what they are actually doing. Grouping by sound, and pointing out how the mouth makes each one, gives a child who cannot reliably hear a difference a second route in through touch and movement. Outside a classroom you can do the same thing with a mirror and your own mouth, which children tend to find funny rather than clinical.
I will feel stressed and tongue-tied (Quran 26:13) is how Moses described his own difficulty with speech. He named where the trouble sat without embarrassment, which is the spirit in which to invite a child to notice what their mouth is doing.
الشعراء
وَيَضِيقُ صَدۡرِي وَلَا يَنطَلِقُ لِسَانِي فَأَرۡسِلۡ إِلَىٰ هَٰرُونَ
and I will feel stressed and tongue-tied, so send Aaron too
Qur’an 26:13read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A small randomised trial of rhythm based training in children with dyslexia found improvements in phonological awareness and some reading skills, which is evidence that working at the level of sound rather than letter shape is a reasonable place to put effort. That trial did not test classroom displays or attention to the mouth, so this is an extension of the principle rather than a tested method. Small sample, particular subskills, so hold it lightly.
Flaugnacco E, Lopez L, Terribili C, Montico M, Zoia S, Schön D. (2015). Music Training Increases Phonological Awareness and Reading Skills in Developmental Dyslexia: A Randomized Control Trial.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If a child can feel how a sound is made, they have another way to tell it apart when hearing alone is not enough.
Before adding more content, look at what the child has to receive it with: attention, memory for what was just said, language. Two children given the same lesson do not take away the same amount, and that difference is usually where the real gap sits.
Clapping games, skipping rhymes and silly verses are worth doing. They are good for the ear and they cost nothing, but they will not on their own repair a reading difficulty, and it is kinder to say so early.
A child working words out from the pictures and the shape of the sentence is guessing well, not reading yet. It usually holds up until around the third year of school and then gives way, because the pictures stop and the words get longer.