The Child that Struggles
Parents are often at a loss to determine what’s best to help their child who is struggling at school. The first place to begin is with your child’s teacher. They may be able to give you guidance and suggestions for strategies that you can employ at home to help your child progress. Children who fall behind in reading often feel discouraged as the class moves on to more and more difficult reading challenges whilst they may need more time to make the same improvement. If your child is struggling with reading it may be worthwhile screen them on the first phonics sounds flashcards. If they don’t have an instant recall of these sounds, that’s a good place to begin assisting them. The mastery learning approach enables your child to quickly memorise easier sounds whilst reinforcing the sounds that they find more difficult. The Busy Bee Mastery Learning Folder is an organisational tool which assists this process and can be made into a “game” with younger children relating to the bee off to get pollen and returning it to the hive (see the How It Works page). However, initially you may prefer to try the approach using envelopes. Glue a series of envelopes onto cardboard and number them 1 to 6. Select six sounds that your child has got wrong and place them into the first pocket. Practise these sounds for a few minutes together … what words have these sounds ? … are there two letters or one that make the sound? … have they seen a word containing this sound ? etc The next day, test the flashcards. Move the correct cards to Pocket 2, whilst the incorrect remain in Pocket one. Once again, practise and talk about the sounds. Each day test first, then spend a few minutes practising the sounds. Once they are read correctly in Pocket 6, store them away for a later spot test to ensure that the sound symbol relationship has transferred into long term memory. As cards move through out of the envelopes, transfer further incorrect sounds into the first pocket. After first sounds, move on to pre-test the alternative sounds. At all times be reading to and with your child. Once they know most of the first sounds, borrow short phonetic reading books from your library of school. Gradually they will move on from sounding out to blending and recognising whole words. At this point they are ready to begin learning sight words. These are words that don’t follow the phonetic rules eg “was” (not woz)
The Child that needs Practise
The Child that needs Extension