Is your child a late talker?It can be very worrying if your child does not start to talk when expected, approximately between the ages of one and two. Not only is it worrying, but it is not uncommon for other people to suggest that you have not talked to your child enough, or that it is in some way your fault! This can be very hard to take, along with watching other proud parents boasting of how well their child can talk - and some at such a young age. For your comfort I tell you that this is not necessarily the case. You may speak to your child much. However, do check this one point first as it is easy to think you are talking - but maybe not as helpfully as you could be for the needs of your child, We will think more about that in a minute. I have helped children who have very clever parents, to those ordinary mums who are just doing a good job - and late talking is not choosy - it can happen to anyone's child! I am a teacher - and it happened to me! Neither does the fact that your child is late talking mean that s/he will not be clever - some of the cleverest people have been late talking. however, my work with such children tells me that they have a high chance of needing more help to learn to read and write - and that is why I wrote my special reading programme - Reading Made Simple. More - you are not alone as there seem to be increasing numbers of children who are late talking. Your child may be referred for speech therapy. Depending on the area in which you live, there may be a long waiting list to receive help. When you receive help, you may be disappointed, as no-one can make your child talk! Your child will talk when sh/e is ready to talk. So how can I help my child to talk? Do not despair as there are many things that you can do to help your child. Here are some ideas that I have collected while working with parent's of late-talking children. I wish I had known them when my own son was late talking! Help the child to understandThis is the most important thing to remember when you have a child who is late talking: concentrate first on helping the child to understand. As parents we all too often presume that our children understand as they hear - and forget that the child may not understand. We want words, but before a child speaks, they must have a reason to speak and understand what they want to say. Communication is not just words, but words with meaning. Think of all the little things that need to be understood by a young child:
Maybe one day your child will pick the correct 'place' picture from the box when you say you are going to the shops, for example. This will show understanding and it is a wonderful feeling to know that you are able to communicate with your child in this way. Use short sentences and speak slowlyVery often we chatter away to our child when they are babies - and that is good, but when they reach the age of needing help to speak, we need to slow down and speak more concisely. When a child starts to speak without help, we naturally find ourselves repeating words: '"Cup?" "Bed," etc... However, it is much harder to do this if the child has not yet started speaking. It is even harder if it is our first child and sh/e is seemingly getting too old for 'baby talk'. Try to listen to the way you talk to your child. You might find that you are using quite complicated sentences. Late talkers are often children who come to me, when they are a bit older, with reading difficulties - I then find that these children often process information at a slower speed. They find it hard to concentrate for very long and need things broken down into tiny, tiny steps. That is what they need now, to help them to learn to talk. You will need to help structure their learning for them. What to do? Use shorter phrases or single key words and avoid long complicated speeches. Be prepared to repeat the key part of each sentence/phrase: 'Coat - coat on.' Show the coat and make moves to help the child into it. 'Do you want a drink? Cup - drink?' And show the cup and mime drinking. The speed of the parent's speech matters. We tend to speak too fast for some of these children to be able to get the meaning of what we have said. Only give one instruction at a time Keep instructions brief and only one at a time. For example, "Let's put the toys away and then we will have dinner." is two instructions - too many for little minds to process. Instead break it into two parts. "Toys away," and help put the toys away so the child learns what you mean. Then say "Dinner," and lead to the table for the meal. If it is an instruction of correction, then help the child to follow though on it. For example, if the child is doing something that should not be done, then say 'Stop," and then follow through to make sure s/he does stop. Remove distractions Because late talkers often later show difficulties concentrating, it stands to reason they had it when younger. How can they concentrate on what you are saying it there is a lot of 'noise' in the background?
Listen! Listen for any noises or sounds your child may make consistently for the same thing. This is the beginning of speech. Pick up on it and repeat the word often, correctly. If you do not know what word a sound represses, then just repeat it. This tells the child it is good and encourages him/her to keep saying it. One day it will become a word. Spend focused quiet time with your child Read plenty of books - let there be unhurried time for you to spend together so that the child has time to process the information presented. Slow life down - these children are often over-stimulated - there is too much for their brain to process. Keep life simple! Children do not need constant activity. Leave them time and they will learn to amuse themselves. Give natural toys - bricks, car, dolls etc.... rather than characters linked to movies - as these have little real meaning for a child outside of the fantasy world which they do not live in. Play with your child - speak as described above. Remove processed foods from your child's diet Remove toxins from your home Research now shows that children with special needs at any stage of their life have a damaged gut. Ultimately you might want to look into healing the gut, for which I recommend Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride's GAPS diet. In the meantime, remove processed food and as a family eat as naturally as possible - full fat foods (as the brain needs saturated fat to function at its best, not least for children). Remove as many toxins as you can - these can come from washing powders, household cleaners, bubble bath, etc... Use plain liquid soap in the washing machine, and vinegar in a spray bottle, half and half with water makes a good kitchen and bathroom cleaner. Dr Mc Bride's advice for these children - and for us all is to only put on the skin that which we can eat! A challenge but we can all do more to reduce those 'smellies' and lotions and potions if we try. She says the the skin is the bodies biggest organ and will let toxins through into the blood stream. When the gut is damaged, these toxins are passed into the body and can accumulate in the brain - where they can slow a child's development. Much more help with these can be found online if you wish to explore this area further. Take hope - one day your child will speak - and one day you will not be able to shut him/her up!! (As if you would ever want to!) This is what people used to tell me - and when your child is four and not talking you find it hard to believe.. But for us, it happened - as it has for many others. Late talkers do not all suddenly start to make up for lost time - some do - but others still only slowly make progress - but take encouragement from every little tiny bit of progress, and look to take the next step. Avoid dwelling on all the things your child cannot do, as that helps no-one - least of all you. Your child needs you! Download our handy crib sheet to keep for easy referenceWhat can I do? My child child is not making progress in reading?More and more parents are finding their child in this situation. You are far from alone. The teaching of reading has been made so complicated, so that you can be made to feel helpless, unless you have hundreds of pounds (literally) to get your child assessed and help obtained. Sadly, even then, your child may only receive a label with little or no help to actually solve the problem. Help is at hand. I have taught hundreds of children to read over the course of over 30 years - of all ages and abilities. I know that it does not need to be complicated. For many children, they only need more structure to their learning than has been given to them at school - plus a programme that can go at their pace, not one set by a classteacher/school/governmnet department/etc.. On my FREE reading programme, Reading Made Simple, I show you how easy it can be to help your child I do not mean that it will not involve much patience, or learning on your part - learning how your child learns, how best to teach in a way that encourages rather then discourages, and so on, but one that lays out a simple programme that you can use to go at your child's pace and that gives you a simple lesson outline that you can follow each day, for just a few minutes before or after school as as part of your home-school lessons. FREE Reading books for reading interventionAs well as our FREE decodable reading books for children who are just starting out, or who have a special need, I also have a series of books for older children who may need to go back and revisit the early stages to build reading accuracy and fluency. These books were written for my older pupils, some of whom had started secondary school before they cam to me for help. Assess what your child can doBefore we find help for your child, the first thing to do is to assess where the problem has arisen. I do this through a simple testing activity that even you can do. When you know where your child has come unstuck, then you can work to rebuild and strengthen the 'wall'. See learning to read as building a house. First a child must learn the initial sounds - the sounds that each letter of the alphabet stand for. Then they must learn to put those sounds together to make words: c-a-t: cat! Once this skill is mastered, they must be able to blend four sounds - word with a consonant blend, like s-w-i-m. These stages form the foundation for reading and it here, in the foundations that I usually find 'cracks' or even 'holes' in the wall that are causing a child to fail to make reading progress. This post will tell you more. A little daily structured help may be all that your child needs. And you can become the expert - and saver £££££'s! Other may need a little more digging and help is provided here. Decodable reading books for reading interventionI have a growing series of decodable reading books for reading intervention.
What is special about these reading intervention books?In my work with older reading 'delayed' children I find a commons symptom, once the intial foudnations have been checked thoroughly, to ensure for example that a child knows the initial sounds and how to blend them to make words. GUESSING has most often become the child's main strategy. This becomes obvious when you find a child confusing words that look very similar, e.g. tip and trip. These books deliberately include these words multiple times to force the child to think about the whole word, not just a part. In short, these books have been written as I have helped REAL children - not by an academic with a literacy degree, but no real working knowledge of how children learn. CVC Words
Consonant blendsBasic common sounds with 2 or 3 letters togetherThe following books have been written to match Level 2 of Reading Made Simple. If these are too hard for your child - do not fear, simply do Level 1 instead, and find a complete set of reading books for you to use with your child.
Keep moving through the Reading Made Simple programme and your child will make progress. Purchase the bundle for a low price: click belowAt last, just what you have been looking for! A professionally written set of totally FREE, levelled phonic reading books, for parents to use to help their child to learn to read! Written by phonic specialists, these books take children from the earliest stages of decoding to reading fluency. Simple to useThese books have been written for Reading Made Simple, where FREE, easy to follow instructions are provided to help you to teach your child to read - simply!
Built in successUnlike many phonic reading books, these books build in success as they only use decodable words for which the child has already been taught the phonic sound and a few sight words which are gradually introduced. These sounds and sight words are then revised again and again as reading book follows reading book. Constant revision and repetition of words helps children to relax knowing their are no nasty surprises. Cheap to printThese books print n black and white just as well as colour making them budget friendly compared with $5 a book new, or $1 in a thrift/charity shop. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE and still give your child the best reading instruction. What these phonic decodable books DO NOT contain
We have endeavoured to create little stories, with a touch of humour where we can, which will set children up for serious, thinking reading later on. We do not believe that the gift of reading is purely to entertain, but as a means of learning about the world around us. Therefore, they are not 'silly', or fantastical, as we want children to live in the real world as thinking people, not a virtual one where their minds can be easily controlled. The Reading BooksThese book bundles are all available for FREE from my store on Teach Simple, where I get a small royalty every time someone downloads them, so enabling me to provide more FREE resources for all to use. If you see other paid products in my Teach Simple store that you would like, please pop over to my TPT store where you can purchase them without subscription. Initial Sounds 'reading books'These are the first books in our series of decodable reading books. They are intended to be used while a child is learning the initial sounds.The process of learning to read begins with learning the sound that each letter of the alphabet stands for when it is at the beginning of a word. We call these beginning or initial sounds. We help children to lean these through s simple daily programme. You can find out about it here. CVC decodable reading booksThe next set in the series is a set of 16 CVC levelled phonic reading books, taking children from their earlies attempts to blend the simplest words such as c-a-t, to reading simple sentences made up of such words, and the sight words: a, is, the of. The characters are introduced throughout the series - farmer Tom, his animals, the dog and cat, and son and daughter, Sam and Pam. Children love these books because they can read them. Starting with the first book where the child simply reads 'a cat', to the last book where they read of Jiff making a mess, children feel their skills developing. The set is accompanied by a set of five workbooks which help to consolidate learning. Instructions for teaching this stage can be found here. Consonant Blends reading booksOnce the child can blend three sounds, we teach them to blend four. Instructions for doing this can be found here. Once again, these books have matching workbooks to help learners to progress as quickly as possible. Common Sounds Level 1 Set 1The next stage is to learn some new sounds, made when two or three letters join together. In the red level series we teach the sounds: ck; oo; ee; sh; ch; th; ng; ing; ar; and or. The children feel secure as the stories carry on telling more of the adventures of the characters they have come to love added to which they meet familiar words, already met in the the pervious two levels. This means that reading fluency can start to develop. If you need help teaching these sounds, we tell you a simple method for doing so here. There are more books in the series, although not yet packaged into bundles and you can find them here. Silent 'E' Words level 1 Set 2Next in the Reading Made Simple reading scheme, we learn the silent 'e' rule and learn to decode words like: cake, time, smoke and tube. If you have a struggling reader we have you covered too. Find out more here.
Is your child struggling to read fluently or are you trying to teach a young child to blend and having trouble? Maybe your child has been taught the letter sounds and maybe even many letter combinations (e.g. ai, igh, ee etc...) and you cannot understand why your child cannot read well.
Why is my child doing these things? In short, your child, even if s/he has been taught phonics, is not blending, but guessing. This means that whoever taught your child phonics did not ensure that the child was hearing and feeling sounds in words to the point where s/he could easily sound out words to spell them: c-a-t, AND put them back together again to read them: c-a-t- = CAT. Other typical signs that this is the case include:
What is blending? Blending is the word we use to describe the putting of sounds together to make words. For example, a child may sound out a word: d-i-g. The child then needs to be able to hear that when we hear d-i-g it is the word DIG. Some children, for various reasons, do not do this automatically, as others might. This leads the child to learn words by heart and then, if s/he sees a word with similar letter patterns, s/he will presume that it is the same word, and rather than check the sounds in the word, will guess. It also has to be borne in mind that this is a two -way process and a child may be able to do it one way (most often to spell), but not the other (most often to read). If the parent sees a child sounding out accurately for spelling words such as BUS and CUT, then s/he can be forgiven for thinking that the child must also be able to sound out such words to read them. However, this again is not automatically the case. In my work with pupils who are struggling to read I often find that one is easier than the other, at least initially. Do not be too hard on yourself, if you taught your child to read - it is a mistake that even many teachers make. See below for the remedy. I thought guessing was a reading strategy Sadly, some teachers have mislead parents to believe that looking at pictures and guessing what the text says under the picture, is a way to learn to read. Sadly, the opposite is true: guessing is an enemy to learning to read. Although phonics is taught in UK schools, sometimes a child is given reading books that do not contain words that a child can decode. This can lead a child to guess and some teachers may not notice what is happening until the habit has been formed. How can I help my child? If your child is just learning to read for the first time - understand the pitfalls of teaching a child to read; understand that once a child knows all of the letter sounds and can hear the beginning sound of words, then the child must now learn to hear sounds in words and take them apart to spell (we call this segmenting words) and put them back together again to read (what we call blending). This stage may take much time and much patience be needed. It is helpful if teachers/parents a child's ear to hear sounds in words, before introducing the child to written words as otherwise a child may memorise the words before learning the skill. If you have an older child who has already memorised small words, like CAT and BUG then again, start with pictures, and then use nonsense words first orally and later to decode. This pack of 3 FREE to download Oral Blending Activities may help you. They are based on hearing sounds, but not seeing words. Here are three simple activities that you can do with either a younger or an older child. They are both listening activities, so the child will not be expected to spell or read the words. With just a little time spent each day, doing these activities, your child will hopefully soon be hearing sounds in words - separating them out as if to spell and putting them back together ready to sound out text.. The secret is to keep practising and to have a lot of patience. One day it will happen. Once the child can blend, see Reading Made Simple, my 100% FREE systematic Phonic Programme to teach reading, spelling and writing. For a small price you can check your child's progress at this level with my Phonic Diagnostic Assessment tool kit. This will help you to detect where your child is having difficulties. It may be individual letter sounds that are weak, or blending words such as MAT and TUB, or those with consonant blends such as FROG and MILK. Once the weakness has been identified you can begin work to remedy the situation. When our children first begin to learn to read we may take care to use phonics. Maybe your child's school uses phonics. Phonics is the proven, best method to teach all children to read and spell well. So your child starts to learn by phonics and you expect all to be well. For some, that is the end of the story. The child does well, learns to read fluently and the parent thinks no more about it. For others, the tale is some what different. Their child fails to make progress. They are told "Maybe s/he is late starter". "Don't worry, it will come!" Precious time passes and still the child cannot read. "What is wrong with my child?" Thinks the parent, and starts to have big concerns. For those children at school, the misery increases. The teacher does not seem to know how to help. The curriculum says the teacher must move on and the child has to go too - and while others can read the questions and the books, for those that cannot, there is little help. They fall behind in all subjects and their time at school is pretty much wasted. By the time the child reaches secondary school, s/he is often disillusioned and may have given up wanting to read, long before. What can a parent in these circumstances do, or do to prevent the case getting worse than it already is? Help is at hand. Reading Made Simple has been written just for such children and the good news is that it is 100% free. You can become your child's teacher and with a road map in front of you, and some guidance, and some determination to succeed, you can help your child, without needing to spend lots of money. Should I get a dyslexia assessment? These are very expensive to do privately and will only get a label without necessarily the help to go with it. A school may provide your child with a dyslexia friendly keyboard, headset and audio equipment, but if s/he cannot read, this may be of little help. If you suspect that your child may have symptoms of dyslexia, you can ask the school to pay for an assessment, though such an assessment is hard to get now. The Government's latest advice is that as the schools teach phonics, all children's needs should now be catered for - even those with potential dyslexia and that the school will provide what is necessary. The other problem is that there are many children needing help and there is probably going to be a long wait for help which may mean more time is wasted. You can help your child NOW. As a teacher of children who need help with reading and the author of Reading Made Simple, I work with such children. As part of my work , I have devised a series of simple tests that you can use to find out where to start your child on Reading Made Simple. This will make it easier for you to pin-point precisely where your child is having difficulties. Having identified the difficulties you can take action to help your child to learn the necessary skills, through the information contained, for FREE, on the website. The test assesses a child's ability to recognise the letter sounds and then to put them together and pull them apart to read and spell words such as cat, do, and frog. This may seem very simplistic, but experience shows me, time and time, again that a child struggling to make progress in reading or spelling has got left behind somewhere at this stage and is then relying on guess work. Many programmes tell the teacher which days to teach which lesson. Sadly not all children fall into this structure. Some needed more time on a skill and didn't get it. The programme moved on and the child was left with a handicap which then holds them back from their true potential. I have produced this simple test to find that place where your child got left behind
This kit is like having me there to assess your child. Your child need not even know it is a test. The instructions are easy to follow and the results easy to interpret and all the information you need is included in the Diagnostic Phonic Assessment Tool Kit. If you do the test and then have trouble interpreting it, despite the guidance, please contact me. Reading Made Simple is easy to use and as many parents say, it is so easy that you could be forgiven for thinking that your child is not learning until you see the progress that has been made. It structures the learning process so carefully so that all can succeed, given support from a parent who has read the programme and has followed it closely. Success* is built into the programme. Your child need not fail any longer! There are many resources, also for FREE, that you can use if they are helpful. *Reading Made Simple has helped many children of varying degrees of difficulty, from profound to no known difficulties, to learn to read successfully, however I cannot guarantee success as there are too many factors outside of my control. The programme is simple, but because it is so simple, every component of the programme is essential - none can be missed out. Please do read the teaching notes carefully. There are many resources, also for FREE, that you can use if they are helpful. Reading Made Simple. Here is pack of 10 ar words with 2 puzzles for each word! The aims/objectives of these activities are: · to help children to sound out to spell words with the sound ‘ar’ · to help children to understand that the letters ‘ar’ together make one new sound There are two kinds of puzzle in this pack.
How can these activities help children to learn the sound 'ar'? Some children have difficulty seeing two letters together but only making one sound. Both of these activities have the letters 'a' and 'r' written together on the same picture segment or letter tile. As the child physically picks up the one piece, they can be encouraged to say 'ar', and relate one card with one sound. It is important that children not only see the letters but say them: this multi-sensory approach is crucial for success. How can these ar spelling puzzles be used? They can be used with individual children and can form a good means of assessing the child's ability. They can also be used as a group activity: duplicates of the pictures can be printed to allow several children to work at once. They can be used by parents/home-educators/private tutors/ in school, out of school - for anyone who is helping a child to learn 'ar'. Easy to make! The games are very simple to make - simply cut out the parts. It is advised that the pieces be laminated if they are to be used with multiple children. There is a small price to pay for these ar spelling activities, but only a small price.
You can purchase them here. |
WelcomeHello, I'm Lilibette, qualified teacher (B.Ed Hons). I have taught phonics in mainstream education, followed by have home-educated my two sons to 18, and am now a private tutor. Categories
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