Syllables, chunks or parts;
whatever you call them, are really, really helpful both for reading and
spelling. Here's why. The single, most agreed upon characteristic of dyslexia
is difficulty with phonemes. What's a
phoneme? - A sound/ spelling chunk. Chunks like ank, ill and ick are
phonemes and most dyslexics have trouble with the little phonemes that sound
alike.
Many
of my students can read complex text and give great oral presentations, but
start to palpitate if I ask them to spell a couple of itsy bitsy chunks like est and ast. So we spend a lot of time hearing those sounds and after that,
spelling them. What exactly is so hard about those phonemes? -Answer: Mostly, the vowels.
In
order to read and spell well you must get to grips with the short and long
vowel sounds, hearing them and then spelling them. Start off by getting a
handle on the short vowel sounds (apple,
egg, income, olive, up). If you feel embarrassed with
words like pat and pet, hang in there because you'll find
that a whole bunch, in fact whole bunches and bunches, of long words are made up
wholly or in part by short-vowel chunks. Spell these words out a few times so
you feel the short vowel chunks, or syllables, for yourself. Be sure to sound out, not spell out, those chunks -this
is key to being able to transfer the learning to other words.
- invested in/ves/ted
- collected col/lec/ted
- badminton bad/min/ton
- picnic pic/nic
- inspected in/spec/ted
- contest con/test
- disrupt dis/rupt
- magnet mag/net
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