[SENco-forum] Reading

I have French students to whom I have to teach vowel sounds.  I do this by
indicating the mouth movement required.  If you start 'a' with a small smile
and increase this for 'e' & 'i' and then 'o' making an O shape and 'u' is
the mouth opening 'up' movement.  When you run them all together they make a
circular motion and a sound like a steam train.  Although they are 14 they
are happy to do it and find it very helpful when trying to pronounce a word.

As for the m/me/met  My daughter would respond with:

m    / mare / met   or   m/ mee/ meet    and as there is no right or wrong
feel to words you could get either, or, she might get it accidentally
correct and still be none the wiser!

Most children respond to see/ hear /repeat /remember.
For others this lack of automaticity in many tasks makes reading or spelling
laborious as they surround themselves with coping strategies that in
themselves eventually drain or overload processing.

Sharon

-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk]On Behalf Of Maggie
Downie
Sent: 15 July 2007 23:59
To: Mary Kelly; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] Reading - Working Memory

Thanks, Mary, that gives me a different angle to look at!

I don't do all this 'questioning' to be awkard!  It's just that a) the whole
subject  is fascinating and b) other people's responses can be very
enlightening/thought provoking!

Philip's point about muscle movements still brings me back to thinking of
automaticity and long term, rather than short term, memory.  If the child
can talk then the muscle movements must already be mastered, but I suppose
that producing them in response to a written stimulus must be more difficult
than 'just talking' . And,  the phonemes in speech are coarticulated, rather
than separately enunciated.  There must be a degree of complexity involved
in the deliberate coarticulation of discrete phonemes required for 'reading'
a word.

I liked the Resnick & Beck approach to blending because I, too, find that
some children blend better if they do it incrementally, in the way Resnick &
Beck describe.  It does appear to put less strain on working memory (and it
stops this dreadful habit of looking away from the word as they try to blend
it!).

I'm not sure if I have found an answer to my original 'question', but it's
been interesting.  Thanks.

Maggie

M

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