Auditory Games to Play with Your Family - Games Part 2

This next game that works auditory analysis skills was invented by my nine-year-old daughter after taking a series of cognitive and academic achievement tests. She calls this game “Copy Me!”.

This game can be played anytime, anyplace and by anyone. You can spend a long time at this game or just a few minutes. This game is the definition of flexibility.

Here’s how you play:

As with all cognitive skills training games, begin very simply and build one feature or item at a time in order to set your student up for success. This game is intended to help students hear sounds in the spoken word and be able to repeat them correctly – each and every sound. It helps develop the skills needed for blending and segmenting words – the foundational skills for reading and spelling.

Start with the basic sounds: /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, and /o/ (the ‘short’ vowel sounds) as well as /t/, /d/, /m/, /n/, /k/, /p/, /s/. /b/, /w/, /f/, /h/, /l/, /z/, /r/, /v/. Start with single sounds and proceed from there. Make sure that you are making the sounds correctly. For example, the sound /d/ is often mispronounced as “duh”. Try your best to avoid using the extra sound (this is really /d/ /u/). You say ‘dad’ not ‘duh a duh’!

Once the single sounds are mastered, begin by combining them into nonsense words and say them to your child. Star with just a vowel and a consonant (VC or CV presentation). Any combination will work. No need to worry about spelling right now.

Some ‘words’ you may choose would be:

Ak, ip, ta, fi, de, un, co, su, ra, em, le, ba, op, wi, and so on.

Say the make believe word and the student must correctly repeat the “word” without mistakenly changing a sound. If a sound is substituted for a different sound simple say “beep” and repeat your word. NEVER let them slide on a sound being off. In this game close is not good enough as it could actually create an incorrect auditory interpretation of something spoken – in short a bad neural pathway.

If your child struggles with this, after four failed attempts, break the ‘word’ down into two sounds separated by a pause and then blend it together. For example: /p/ (pause) /u/ and then /pu/. If need be, your child can repeat the single sounds first and then follow with the blended nonsense word. You want your child to succeed not fail. If they try unsuccessfully too many times in a row they can come to believe they can’t do the activity and this can develop into an self fulfilling prophesy as their brains ‘learn’ to believe this lie as a truth.

Once the two sound words are mastered with all the sounds listed above, it would be appropriate to add in other sounds and more of them. Do this incrementally by adding new sounds to mastery and then (and only then) add in more complexity by increasing the number of sounds in the nonsense words. You can use all sounds including the ones that are usually spelled with more complex codes (such as ‘igh’ as in light and ‘oo’ like in look and boot) since you are not worrying about spelling at this time, just focus on the pronunciation and sounds.

My kids really get into this game and end up with words as silly and complicated as hinkpointching (if you have trouble reading it break it down: hink-point-ching) and hinklestinkerplock (hinkle-stinker-plock).

Have the kids join in by saying words of their own making to you so they can be “teacher” and you the “student”. Occasionally, it is helpful to give them the opportunity to correct your mispronunciation of a sound within the word you are given by them. When they get really good you probably won’t even have to try to give them the opportunity to correct you – it will happen often enough anyway!

As Plutarch said : Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little.

Enjoy!

Tara

Auditory Games to Play with Your Family – Games Part 1

OK so it took me a little longer than a week to get this blog entry up. Life is fun with 2 kids and a business …but often a little unpredictable :-)

This first game is a twist on “I spy!” Instead of the traditional approach of “I spy with my little eye something beginning with the letter I” (and you are looking at an ice cream or a picture of an igloo), simply switch to focusing on the sounds. Play the game “I hear with my little hear, something with the sound /i/ (like the first sound in igloo)” or the sound /i-e/ (like in ice cream)”.

At this stage it is not important that the players can identify which written letter or letters would be used to correctly spell the word. The focus is on the sounds only.

Taking this same game a little further, you can then have the child “spell” using sounds only. My little boy just turned 5 on March 30th and he thinks you spell “cat” with the sounds /c/, /a/, and /t/, and further that these sounds are represented by the letters ‘c’, ‘a’ and ‘t’ respectively. This way he can “spell by the sounds” really big and complicated words such as “birthday” by saying the sounds /b/, /er/, /th/, /d/, /a-e/ with breaks in between. He will later be able to learn which letter or letters are used to correctly represent those sounds in these words.

The Can Do Cubes phonics program, available on my web site, is a great tool to introduce the sounds and their written symbols. Made of solid wood with the written correspondences engraved onto each side of the cubes, they offer a tactile and visual component to the learning process. The cubes come in two boxes. The first box is Stage One, consisting of at least one written representation of each of the sounds in the English language. Stage Two introduces more complex written variations of the sounds.

The Can Do Cubes phonics program is great for beginners as well as those who need to back track to grasp this sound and code component of spelling and reading. Since spelling and reading are the flip side of the same coin, these skills are taught back to back. Fluency of segmenting, blending, and decoding and encoding are necessary for fluid reading and ease of comprehension. This program helps promote those skills.

This product is non-consumable and, therefore, very cost efficient when used in a family of more than one student. The cubes are very durable (believe me my son has tried his best to destroy them and has been unsuccessful after over a year’s use) and hold their resale value too.

It is easy to see using the Can Do Cubes that a single sound change can change an entire word.

The Can Do Cubes phonics program is very good for children who need to be on the move to learn best. My son likes to stack the cubes as he earns them (by correct recognition of the sound or the code) which helps with fine motor skills. When the stack is high enough he earns the right to either kick them over (only when given permission, but this also helps with other gross motor skills such as standing on one foot while the other has to aim at a target) or roll a ball at them like in bowling (again a good motor skill). My son sometimes likes slam dunking them into a small makeshift basketball hoop or bucket.

You and your child get to make up the rules. The possibilities are endless and you will be pleasantly surprised how creative your child can be. Remember that rewards for getting the sounds and code correct will cause a burst of dopamine, helping to lock in the learning, so let them experiment with different ways of working with the cubes.

My next entries will be on some games that help with sound recognition using nonsense words. My nine-year old daughter has called the first one “Copy Me!” and the second one “Fill in the Blanks”.

For more information on auditory analysis skills, testing and training visit The Brain Trainers.

By the way.....I hear with my little ear something beginning with /b/ (hint I’m tired)! Until next time.

Tara

Auditory Games to Play with Your Family – Introduction

In this week’s blog entries, I will be outlining several games that will help with sound recognition as well as sound segmenting, blending and analysis.

Let’s start with some background information to understand the importance of these skills.

Studies show that about 20 percent of the population has difficulty reading and spelling. Of this group about 80% have difficulty discerning the individual sounds within the spoken word.

These small “bites” of sound are called phonemes. For example in the word “cat” there are three distinct sounds /c/ /a/ and /t/ and for the word “with” there are also three sounds /w/ /i/ and /th/.

Each sound in the English language is represented in writing by a grapheme, made up of one or more letters of the alphabet. For example the sound /a-e/ (often referred to as the “long a”) can be represented in a number of different ways including ‘a-e’ like in cake, ‘a’ like in baby, ‘ay’ like in jaybird, ‘ey’ like in bird of prey, ‘ei’ like in reindeer, ‘eigh’ like in eight, and ‘ea’ like in steak.

Below is an example of how the /a-e/ sound is represented in the Can Do Cubes Phonics Program.

If your brain cannot “hear” the sounds then it will be difficult at best to spell without totally relying on rote memorization techniques. Spelling requires that you hear a word, segment it into its smallest sounds (phonemes) and then write down the code for each sound one after the next.

Reading works the reverse way by recognizing the grapheme or code and determining which sound it represents. After identifying what sound a single letter or combination of letters makes, blend the small sound units together to form a solid sounding word. Rote memorization is a coping option for some, but the brain can only memorize and retain so many sight words. This also limits reading more complex material or information on topics not yet covered, and can be very exhausting.

Let’s see an example using the word “dog”. Start by recognizing that the ‘d’ is pronounced /d/ (like in dad making sure not to pronounce it as /duh/), the ‘o’ is vocalized as /o/ (like in octopus), and the ‘g’ like /g/ (as in get). Saying the sounds individually at first and then with increased speed and closeness, by sliding from one sound to the next, you can decode the written word through blending.

The hard part is when you have a child who just can’t hear these small units of speech. Can this be fixed? Also, what about little ones? Is there a way to make sure they can and do develop this skill? The answer is a resounding YES for both situations! This is where brain training comes into play. You can work these skills early to avoid problems by encouraging effective neurological auditory pathways from the start. The same activities can be used to help ‘rewire’ the brain to hear these little sounds. This week's blog will outline some activities that will help with auditory analysis skills, but for more comprehensive brain training, I recommend BrainSkills on-line.

If you are concerned your older student can’t hear, blend or segment sounds, you may want to perform a simple test called The Gibson Test of Brain Skills. This test will take about 40 minutes and can be done in your home on your computer. This test will cover the sound segmenting, blending and analysis skills as well as processing speed, working memory, long-term memory, visual processing, word attack, attention, and logic & reasoning skills for only $29.95. If interested in more information about this test go to The Gibson Test of Brain Skills.