Phonemic Awareness : What You Need to Know for Overcoming Dyslexia at Home
Is your child having a hard time learning which sounds each letter makes? It’s also called phonemic awareness. If so, I have some great tools for you. However, first it’ll help to understand how and why you need these tools.
Overcoming Dyslexia Requires Learning Phonemic Awareness
Children with TRUE dyslexia have a hard time with phonemic awareness.
If your child has a true dyslexia diagnosis, then your child lacks phonemic awareness (PA). You can teach phonemic awareness, but it takes daily teaching to help your child overcome.
Picking a program that works for a child is not easy. However, you can find the RIGHT program for your child by learning about reading programs and about your child’s needs.
To learn reading skills, children with dyslexia require phonemic awareness programs. You can use a program at home or in school, but the type of program is the key to overcoming true dyslexia.
People may recommend overcoming dyslexia in a lot of different ways. However, your approach to your child’s dyslexia must be based on your child’s specific needs. No program is “best” for every child.
Reading programs can teach skills in many different ways. Let’s look at a couple of types of programs.
Which Program is Best for Teaching A Child With Dyslexia?
Learning to read by whole word recognition is the least likely to work for children with true dyslexia. There aren’t many whole word reading programs. However, one program that is “whole word” is Reading Recovery, which many schools use.
“Reading Recovery” teaches “efficient patterns of learning”. The idea is that the patterns help the kids work at the same level as their peers, and it helps them progress in the classroom. A lot of times, Reading Recovery doesn’t work if a child has true or severe dyslexia.
Reading Recovery is the first program a tutor tried to use to overcome my son’s reading problems. Unfortunately, the program was totally ineffective. Reading Recovery is Jenny’s child’s first program too, but the program didn’t help her son either.
Simply put, children with true dyslexia usually have phonemic awareness deficits (dyslexia). Reading Recovery does not work on fixing a phonemic awareness deficit, so it often doesn’t work for our kids.
The “best”, most effective way to overcome dyslexia is by teaching phonemic awareness explicitly.
Phonemic Awareness
When you have phonemic awareness, you know each word is made up of separate sounds (“phonemes”). Phonemic awareness instruction teaches your child how spoken language relates to printed text. It begins with letters and sounds, and goes on to teach complex, multi-syllable words. Specific, sequential, multisensory instruction is covered by every comprehensive Orton-Gillingham reading program. The Orton-Gillingham programs spell out every detail for reading decoding and encoding (which is spelling).
Which program is best for you to use is determined by your child’s individual needs. You’ll need to determine, or know, if your child has phonemic awareness issues.
You can get an idea of what kind of program you may need by asking your child how many “sounds” he hears in certain words. For example, “short” has 3 sounds.. /sh/, /or/, /t/ — “Short” is a tough one though.
A simple word would be “see”… It has two sounds. The sounds are /s/ and /ee/. Another example is “dog” having 3 sounds. The three sounds are: /d/, /o/, /g/.
The key is see if your child can pick out each spoken sound in each word. He needs to be able to do this in order to sound out words when reading or to know which letters to write when spelling.
You can buy pre-made phonemic awareness programs. They’re the best choice for teaching children with true dyslexia. Or you can study the Orton-Gillingham methodology and teach your child with a program you make. We used a combination of home created resources and purchased programs.
Phonemic Awareness Programs You Can Use At Home:
If your child doesn’t have much phonemic awareness, you can lean towards **Earobics or **Fast ForWord Literacy to begin with. Be aware, if your child has auditory processing issues, he may find them hard to use. If your child doesn’t like the program at first, then you can set up a reward system. You can reward your child for completion of an activity or for working a certain amount of time. (For example, If you work on the program for 20 minutes, I’ll read a book to you).
Fast ForWord Literacy is no longer a software program available for home use. Therefore, you’ll find its usually easier to hire a trained providers or to use the program online where it’s offered.
If you’d like an online solution, then Gemm Learning provides Fast ForWord online. You may prefer to go to a paid provider anyway, because their training helps them work with kids. Sometimes having a trained provider can create the best outcomes.
Orton-Gillingham Reading Programs for Home Use:
After your child has basic phonemic awareness, whether by using a program like Earobics, or through individualized therapy, you should be freer to choose remediation programs. You may also want to read about the Orton-Gillingham methodology and Orton-Gillingham reading programs before you decide on a program.
Depending upon your circumstances, you can use private services, services at school, or help your child at home. If you plan to do it yourself, check out the Reading Programs for Home Use. These programs don’t cost a lot and they’re based upon Orton-Gillingham methods. However, any program’s success requires daily practice.
In some cases, you have to create or buy your own materials. The programs are all usable by anyone who can read, comprehend, and follow directions.
If you are going to get services from a provider, get to know the programs at on our “Proven Packaged Reading Programs” page. These programs are more expensive, but they’re ones used by tutors more often. They CAN also be done at home. The programs are complete, comprehensive, and are proven to work.
Free Phonemic Awareness Tools
If you need free phonemic awareness tools for working with your child, I have created some tools to go with my book. (The Dyslexia Help Handbook for Parents: Your Guide to Overcoming Dyslexia Including Tools You Can Use for Learning Empowerment, available on Amazon.)
The first tool is a table of phonemes. You can use it as a checklist when teaching your child each individual phoneme. Just print the PDF file at Phoneme Table and use it as your teaching guide.
I also have some Phonogram Tiles that you can print on cardstock. Laminate the pages with adhesive laminate, then cut them out. You’ll have the letter tiles you need to use for letter and spelling practice with your child. You can find the Phonogram Tiles PDF at Complete Set of Phoneme Tiles.
Lastly, I have made some sight word cards. You can print this PDF on perforated business cards with 10 cards per sheet. You can buy them on Amazon or at a local office supply store. This is the easiest way to make the flashcards. If you want to print the words on cardstock, you can use a paper cutter to cut the words into flashcards. However, it is harder to make the cards a uniform size this way. The sight word cards can be found at: Sight Word Cards Second List
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