Common Challenges – Hooked on Phonics

Literary S.O.S: How to Spot Signs of a Struggling Reader

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 18:01:55 +0000

Learning to read is an incredibly complex and taxing task for little ones. Their brains are growing and stretching to recognize letters, sounds, words, meaning, and context. It is a rewarding, and sometimes frustrating, experience. Compounding what sometimes feels like a classroom competition are literacy urban myths—like the genius three-year-old who can read at a fourth grade level—that can set the bar intimidatingly high. On the flip side, parents are bombarded with panic-driven and opportunistic marketing campaigns for toys and games that make miraculous claims (often with little results). All parents want to support and facilitate the best learning experience for their child and that includes being able to detect and correct any struggles that may come up.

Problem…What Problem?

Reading issues can be brought to a parent’s attention in different ways, and oftentimes, it is a teacher or caretaker who first notices that there may be a challenge to surmount. Even parents who are very in-tune with their child may be surprised to learn that their child is a struggling reader.

If a concern is broached, specific questions can help clarify exactly what the problem is and the best way to address it. Here are some questions to consider:

When was the issue first identified?
How often does the child run into this issue?
Have there been other red flags in class (like behavior issues)?
Have alternative teaching methods been introduced?
What are the next steps in terms of research and assessment?

What to Watch For

Even if the bulk of learning is done at school, parents can still watch for issues when singing, playing, and reading at home. Stumbling through books isn’t necessarily cause for panic, but if some of the following issues seem to be present, it may be worth further time and investigation:

Trouble remembering and recognizing letters of the alphabet
Inability to identify rhyming words or complete familiar rhymes despite frequent repetition and practice
Struggling to sound out words and/or string sounds together
Laboring over a word despite seeing or reading it several times before
Guessing or making up words when reading
General disinterest in words and letters
Resisting reading aloud
Delayed speech

The ABC of Possibilities

The golden rule of children’s literacy is simple: read every day. Engage your little one in a book whenever possible. Ask them to pick their own bedtime story, identify familiar characters and, for simple texts, prompt them to complete sentences. Make that time enjoyable, not stressful, for both of you. If your child feels like reading is a punishment or chore, he or she is sure to resist. Introduce plenty of silly nursery rhymes and songs during the day, and incorporate brain-stimulating toys like puzzles, flashcards, and magnetic letters. The “real world” is full of opportunities to spot letters and numbers, like stop signs, grocery aisle numbers, and digital clocks.

Hooked on Phonics is another effective tool to help struggling readers—both in book and app form, depending on what’s more effective for your child’s learning style. Each lesson takes 20 minutes or less and offers a fun, interactive activity to help you mix up your child’s reading routine.

Child Problems, Adult Frustrations

You’ve read and rhymed your heart out, and you still can’t see progress in your child’s reading abilities. So what now? Create a support group for your little one and your family: Check in with your child’s “team”—teachers and caretakers, in particular. Share your concerns and formulate a plan to get your child extra help and attention during reading time. From there, make an appointment with your doctor, who can recommend channels for proper testing for ADD, ADHD, and dyslexia, if necessary. It’s easy to jump to a conclusion about learning disabilities, especially after spending 20 minutes on Internet comment boards. But there is no need to panic as resources and support are available. Your child has the best advocate in their corner—you. Simply continue to foster a love of reading and learning, one day (and page) at a time.

Top photo credit: Maria Uspenskaya/Shutterstock

Does Phonics Make Kids Bad Spellers?

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 18:37:35 +0000

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A mother was reading to her child from a zoo book before his nap. As they were flipping through the pages of the book, the child points to a picture and proudly says,
“Look Ma! It’s a frickin’ elephant!”
Trying to hide her shock, Mom takes a deep breath and asks, “What did you call it?”
“It’s a frickin’ elephant, Ma! It says so on the picture!”
Mom reads the caption under the photo . . . And so it does . . .
African Elephant

I have to admit. This one made me laugh.

We’ve all heard the jokes about how teaching phonics causes people to become bad spellers. “Heck! The word phonics can’t even be spelled phonetically. It doesn’t start with an f!”

Believe me, I get it. There are so many irregular spellings in the English language how is any kid–let alone one with reading challenges–supposed to learn to spell?

You may be surprised to hear that, from an educational perspective, research shows that a strong foundation in phonics actually helps children learn to spell. Despite all of the irregular spellings in the language, which children will have to learn, instruction in letter-sound correspondence (phonemic awareness) and learning the basic phonetic rules help children learn to be better spellers.

Louise Spear-Swerling wrote a peer-reviewed article with some tips on how to teach spelling to children with disabilities. Here are some highlights:

Suggestions for teaching spelling to students with Learning Disabilities

1. Provide systematic phonics instruction that incorporates teaching of phonemic awareness. Although this kind of instruction alone will not be enough to make students flawless spellers, phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge form an essential base for accurate spelling in English.

2. Teach common irregular words from the earliest stages of spelling. It is virtually impossible to generate a complete sentence without common irregular words such as of, what, and were. Therefore, it is important to begin teaching these kinds of words early, as one part of a more comprehensive spelling program. Multisensory techniques involving repeated tracing and saying of words can be especially helpful for introducing irregular words . . .”

3. Teach useful spelling rules. Although many English words do not conform to consistent rules, some generalizations are very helpful to students, such as rules for adding endings to words with a silent e (make, making) or to closed syllables that end in a single consonant (sit, sitting).”

Here’s a link to Louise Spear-Swerling’s complete article, Spelling and Students with Learning Disabilities in LD Online: The Educator’s Guide to Learning Disabilities and ADHD.

But I like a good spelling joke as much as the next person. So, please feel free to Tweet your phonics spelling jokes to me @HookedonPhonics.

Examples of sources

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

Bruck, M. (1990). Word-recognition skills of adults with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia. Developmental Psychology, 26, 439-454.

Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1991) Tracking the unique effects of print exposure in children: Associations with vocabulary, general knowledge, and spelling. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 264-274.

Greene, J. (1996). Language!: Effects of an individualized structured language curriculum for middle and high school students. Annals of Dyslexia, 46, 97-121.

Invernizzi, M., Abouzeid, M., & Gill, T. (1994). Using students’ invented spelling as a guide for spelling instruction that emphasizes word study. Elementary School Journal, 95, 155-167.

Other helpful sources:

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ehri, L. C. (1998). Learning to read and learning to spell are one and the same, almost. In C. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory and practice across languages (pp. 237-269). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Moats, L. C. (1995). Spelling: Development, disability, and instruction. Timonium, MD: York Press.

Moats, L. C. (2000). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Co.

Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1998). Spelling acquisition in English. In C. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory and practice across languages (pp. 61-80). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Educational Technology: Using the Power for Good

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 10:43:32 +0000

I sit across from my 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter, patiently waiting for our dinner to be served at a well-known chain of family restaurants. My mom has joined us for a quick bite to eat, but the service is taking longer than expected. My stomach growls impatiently. I’m surprised because my children seem unaffected by the delay. Usually, by now one of them would be voicing a complaint by kicking the other under the table. I follow my son’s gaze to see the reason for his rapt attention. A TV. My daughter, not normally shy about expressing herself, also seems unphased by the delay. I think she is absorbed in the conversation at the table, but she, too, is enveloped by the allure of another wall-mounted, kid-anesthetizer. My mom and I look around the small dining room and count no fewer than seven TV screens in plain view. What could be so enticing? Golf. My kids have never shown any interest in the sport. Has that suddenly changed? No. It’s simply the lure of a moving picture. As an editorial director for a children’s educational publishing/media company, I wonder:

· What if the appeal of that digital screen could be used for good instead of, well, Angry Birds?

· What if teachers and parents could harness that attention so that all children could learn to be strong, confident readers?

What plagues so many kids and adults is that reading is something we have to be taught. English is a very difficult code to decipher in part because, for every rule, there’s an exception to that rule. In order to succeed in school and in life, every child must learn how to read.

As a former special educator and researcher for Sesame Street, I know the statistics about the impact of illiteracy on the nation’s children:

37% of children today are entering Kindergarten without the skills necessary to begin learning to read and write.

· How reading is a gateway skill to learning.

We know that the better a child can read, the better he can learn all other subjects.

Over the past several decades, as a nation, we have seen a decline in U.S. academic performance. Concern about how future generations will remain competitive with other countries has led the majority of states to adopt the new set of educational guidelines, the Common Core State Standards. A list of what children should know, grade by grade, from Kindergarten through 12^th grade in math, English and literacy, the CCSS were intended to develop the critical-thinking, problem-solving and analytical skills students will need to be successful in college or the workforce.

While CCSS is being rolled out in the majority of states, it is not without its challenges. It has proven to be a highly controversial issue and rollout is being threatened in several states. NY Times columnist Bill Keller wrote that [Common Core] is an ambitious undertaking, and there is plenty of room for debate about precisely how these standards are translated into classrooms. In fact, a new survey of 20,000 teachers found that the majority are enthusiastic about implementing CCSS in their classrooms.

However, more than three-quarters of the teachers reported that they need more time to find teaching materials and develop lesson plans that align with CCSS. In addition, many school districts across the country face budgetary shortfalls and larger class sizes, which means that providing an adequate number of computers in schools to administer the Common Core assessments is also challenging.

With all this in mind, I came across a study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. The study looked at screen time and children’s behavior. It found that kids ages 2 to 10 spend almost two hours a day on digital media. Then the study looked at how much of that time is well spent on educational media, as reported by parents. The researchers learned that:

78% of the media consumed by 2-4 year-olds is educational. But the percentage of time spent on educational media goes down to 44% for 5- to 7-year-olds and a dismal 27% for 8- to -10 year-olds.

These numbers would be less concerning, in my opinion, if kids’ overall media consumption didn’t rise precipitously as children get older. A different study from Common Sense Media focused on media consumption of children ages 0-8 and found that:

Between 2011 and 2013, the amount of time children spent using mobile devices in a typical day tripled.

These two studies revealed a gaping hole to me that seemed like a huge opportunity and a huge responsibility.

· Could tried-and-true reading programs take proven methods of teaching kids to read and rethink them as digital apps that kids would actually want to do and still teach them to read?

· Could these apps be aligned with CCSS and function as an effective teaching tool for educators, seeking lessons and materials that teach to these new standards?

With school budgets being slashed from coast to coast and average class sizes on the rise, classroom teachers need all of the support they can get.

· Could educational apps be a cost-effective means of supporting instruction in the classroom?

Teachers who use educational media and technology say that they do so for a multitude of reasons.

Students are highly motivated to use digital resources.
Electronic media can allow students to go at their own pace and choose their own level and settings.
Interactive media can maximize learning by providing immediate corrective feedback to students, not allowing them to progress until the answer is correct.
Digital resources can help maximize learning in small groups and allow teachers to provide targeted instruction.

Even the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Fred Rogers Center recently teamed up to publish a joint position on the use of technology and interactive media for young children (ages 0-8). It states, When used intentionally and appropriately, technology and interactive media are effective tools to support learning and development. Their position is that:

Effective uses of technology and interactive media need to:

Be active, hands-on, engaging, and empowering.
Give the child control.
Provide adaptive scaffolds to help children progress in skills development at their individual rates…
Be used as one of many options to support children’s learning.…
Expand children’s access to new content and new skills.
Become routine and transparent… [so that] the child or the educator is focused on the activity or exploration itself and not on the technology.

In the future, I hope to see more standards-based, effective and fun educational apps developed for school and home use. Educators can seek out guidelines (like those offered by the NAEYC/Fred Rogers Center) for evaluating cost-effective, interactive media for young children that is also Common Core aligned. All of this, of course, is in an effort to ensure that no child gets left behind.

Unfortunately, it’s not hard to see that as long as there are places that we as a society have to wait (restaurants, gas pumps, the DMV), electronic media will be there, ready and willing to sedate our children’s brains with the likes of “least-common-denominator” programming or Candy Crush. In the meantime, I vow to fight the good fight and provide children with media options that will help them become readers, thinkers, and problem solvers-before society introduces them to the newest wave of reality television shows.

“Mom, please don’t embarrass me.”

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:00:15 +0000

I’m not sure if my 14-year-old son, Chris, is impressed or appalled that I’m blogging, but I do know that he’s intrigued. At breakfast this morning he asked if I was going to talk about him online. “Do you not want me to?” I asked.

“It depends,” he said, “are you going to tell them that it took me a long time to learn how to read?”

Here are some things you probably don’t expect me to confess right off the bat:

When it came time to teach Chris to read, I never used Hooked on Phonics (which isn’t why he struggled, by the way).
Chris is dyslexic and my husband and I (along with Chris’s teachers) had a difficult time getting him to read before he was diagnosed.
We felt completely unprepared when it came to helping Chris learn to read at home, nevermind the dyslexia .

But we did try (and try and try and try), which is the most important thing.

Practice Makes Perfect

That’s what I’d like this blog to focus on: trying to get our kids to read. While we have a number of ideas on this (ahem, an entire series of Learn to Read systems under the Hooked on Phonics brand), it’s not the only solution.

I’m planning to share this space with teachers, reading specialists, award-winning children’s book authors, our friends from literacy organizations and you. Yes, if you want to share your experience with other parents we’d love to have you post. Likewise, since I’m following a number of you already, we can add you to the blog roll.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I do want to introduce you to my friends and colleagues here as well as in their own right, they’re former reading specialists, teachers, children’s book authors, curriculum developers and, of course, parents many of whom have just wrapped up a year-long (multi-million dollar) labor of love re-engineering how we deliver the phonics platform in fun (but still educationally sound), interactive ways.

Before we left the house, I reminded Chris that he’s not alone in the world—more than 40 million American children and adults are dyslexic (including one of my heroes, Walt Disney, and some of Chris’s, Orlando Bloom and Tom Cruise). Some people have to try harder than others, but the point is to try and, where we can, to help others get ahead.

“Well,” he said, “if it helps people to know that you tried to the point of tears, I guess I don’t mind.”

More tears. Proud mom.