Dyslexia Tutoring of Utah

March Newsletter

Welcome to Spring!
March is the time of year that I start to get hope that the warm
weather is just around the corner. Of course, Mother Nature will still tease us
with snow and rain until June, but the bitter cold, I hope, is gone for awhile.
There are just a few reminders that I would like to make you aware of
this month.
March 4th is the LDAU State Conference. It will be held in Provo this
year, and is a day full of classes that would be great as parents to attend. I
will be there helping with the Dyslexia Simulation. If you have never had a
chance to do this simulation, now is the time. There are scholarships
available to attend, and it would be worth it! We have registration forms in
the office. Many of our tutors will be attending this conference, so they might
be cancelling some of your appointments that day to attend.
Saturday March 5th is our FLASH game fundraiser. At this time, we have
not had anyone buy any tickets, so I am hoping that some of you still might
be thinking of joining us that night. If you have time and would like to
support us at this event, please ask about the tickets. If you sell an $8.00
ticket, $4.00 of it goes into your account to help you with tutoring costs. The
game starts at 7 pm, and it is at UVU campus in Orem.
Some of you have asked me about SPRING BREAK. We traditionally
take the Thursday and Friday off of Easter week. This year, that would be
April 21-22. I know that all school districts have their own calendars, but here
at DTOU, we will be taking those days off. You can arrange with your tutors
any additional days that you might want to take off due to family trips, but
know that we will be open that week through Wednesday.
We are still in need of PICTURES of your children. We are updating our
picture board and are asking all of you to bring in a CURRENT picture of your
child. It does not have to be a school picture, but a current HEADSHOT of
your child would be helpful. Please give them to your tutor as soon as
possible.
Some of you have also asked how you can help with donations and
supplies. One of the items that we use a lot of is WATER and SMALL SNACKS
for the kids (chips, fruit bars, granola bars, popcorn, fruit snacks, etc.) Often
times your child comes straight from school, and needs something to get
them through the hour. If anyone would like to donate cases of water, and a
box of some kind of snack, that would be great. We also go through a lot of
dry erase markers, disinfectant wipes, and kleenex, any of these items would
be greatly appreciated.
 In this newsletter, I have included an article that I wrote about
Phonemic Awareness and the importance of it. Please take time to read
through it, P.A. is vital for reading success, and many students with dyslexia
are lacking in this area.
I have also attached a great reading list of books that will help you
explain dyslexia to your child, please check them out from your library if you
feel that your child needs a little more explanation of why they struggle like
they do.
In the office, I have the current edition of the PERSPECTIVES magazine.
It is the periodical put out by the International Dyslexia Association. This
issue talks about some of the controversial treatments that are out there for
dyslexia. If you have a chance to read it, it would help you to know where
you should not spend your money, and to make sure that you research out a
program thoroughly before enrolling your child in it.
As always have a great month, and let’s hope for warm weather!

Sincerely,

Nanci Ross
Executive Director
Dyslexia Tutoring of Utah

Phonemic Awareness
Its importance to reading, writing and spelling is far from overrated!
Phonemic awareness for the elementary student is far from overrated.
Having spent most of my teaching at the upper elementary level, I soon
realized that many, if not most, of my students had not grasped the concept
of phonemic awareness that they should have required in their primary
years.
There are several definitions of phonemic awareness. For simplicity
sake, let’s define it as the ability to hear the individual sounds that make up
words, and being able to understand that speech is made up of individual
sounds. English is an alphabetic language. Being able to identify and use
these individual sounds helps make phonics make sense. The inability to do
so allows students to develop spelling skills only by rote.
Research clearly indicates that phonemic awareness is highly related
to learning to read; even more so than general intelligence, reading
readiness, and listening comprehension. The researcher, Stanovich,
contends that it is the most important core and factor separating normal and
disables readers. Without phonemic awareness, children will be unable to
decipher written letters into sound, this preventing them from deciphering
sounds in to written language and learning to spell. (Stanovich, Carrol, Meta-
linguistic Awareness and Beginning Literacy)
 Phonemic awareness has proven to be the single best predictor of
reading success between kindergarten and third grade. It is at this level that
inventive spelling is used, encouraged even, which is perfectly acceptable
until formal and direct phonemic lessons are taught and mastered. One of
the goals at this level is to establish confidence. Children should feel
comfortable with attempting to pronounce unfamiliar words. We want then to
be able to separate individual sounds and following certain phonic rules. This
helps them become more aware of the composition of sounds to words.
There are several ways to help develop phonemic awareness skills.
Rhyming happens to be one of the easiest and most enjoyable for teachers
and parents to use and for students to learn. Because of its playfulness,
rhyming activities help children easily learn words and images and develop
communication skills. Connecting pictures with rhymes will help children see
how books work.
One of my favorite rhyming activities stems back to my childhood, with
the song called The Name Game, by Shirley Ellis. Using the name SARAH as
an example, the song follows this pattern.
Sarah, Sarah, bo-barah,
Banana-fana fo-farah
Fee-fi-mo-marah
Sarah!
A verse can be created for any name. If the name starts with a vowel
or vowels sounds, the “b”. “f’ or “m” is inserted in front of the name.
And if the name starts with a b, f, or m, that sound is simply not
repeated. (For example: Billy becomes “Billy, Billy bo-illy”; Fred becomes
“banana fana fo-red”; Marsha becomes “fee-fi mo-arsha”.) Keep in mind,
some names may generate profanity or rude language, so BEWARE.
Teach phonemic awareness by direct instruction of individual or
clusters of letters/letter patterns/sound correspondences. Demonstrate by
having child listen as you sound out words without stopping between sounds.
Phonemic awareness improves with practice. Using an “I say, you say, model
allows students to hear a sound or word correctly. Practicing is an ongoing
process.
Word work, a form of phonemic deletion, is having the child play with
words by omitting certain parts or letters from words. Phonemic deletion is
deleting certain words from compound words or certain letters from words
and having the students recognize other words within a word. For example, if
we delete “house” from the word “doghouse”, we have the word “dog”, or
removing the “f” from flip, to get “lip”. Phoneme deletion helps in reading,
writing and spelling by braking down words or deleting sounds form words to
help spell them correctly.
Shared reading is valuable and quite effective with written language.
Reading aloud to children and having them fill in a rhyme at the end of a
sentence helps develop phonemic awareness.
Preschool children need to hear separate words, recite rhymes and
pretend to write. They need to be exposed to the letters and their names.
 Kindergarteners need to understand the basic concepts about print;
blend phonemes such as /k/ /a/ /t/ to hear cat. They should know some sight
words and recognize their own name in print and be able to write it.
First grade students should be able to move from phonemic to
transitional spelling, using decoding strategies and recognize well over 50
high frequency words. They should also be able to understand that one
symbol can stand for multiple sounds, or that sounds can be represented in
multiple ways.
Students in second and third grades should continue to use rhyming
words and when writing, recognize rhyming words in text, using visual or
auditory word family cues to hear, and read a variety of poems and songs.
They should use alliteration in creating poems and rhymes, continue to apply
syllabication processes and problem-solve unknown words in text through
syllabication. Last, but not least, they should use their syllabication
knowledge to assist in spelling.
Phonemic Awareness is important to reading, writing, and spelling. Do
not assume that children understand this awareness. Singing, listening,
paired readings and discussion will become some of the best interventions a
teacher or parent can use. Phonemic awareness should be explicitly taught
in order for students to become better readers, writers, and spellers.
If you are wondering whether or not your child has all of the phonemic
awareness skills needed to become proficient and skilled readers, writers
and spellers, talk to your tutor about having them to a quick assessment to
see if they are weak in any of the basic phonemic awareness skill areas.
(Rhyming, blending syllables, segmentation, beginning and ending letter
sounds, syllable counting, syllable deletion, syllable addition and
manipulation of phonemes). Don’t assume that your child is OK, this is vital
to their reading, writing and spelling success!
Nanci Ross
Executive Director of Dyslexia Tutoring of Utah
March 2011