More than a decade ago, I had a student that was 7 years old and unable to read. Other schools had told his mother that he was learning disabled and would take years to learn how to read properly. These schools were not well versed in teaching phonics and the “look-see” method of reading just didn’t make sense to him. His mom was desperate to salvage his self esteem and help him learn to read before he grew out of his critical stage for learning.
The first day I started to teach him I could see that he had been misdiagnosed. The disconnect was occurring between knowing the sounds of the letters and being able to blend them into words. Because he was taught to only memorize words, he couldn’t make sense of the process of ‘sounding out’ and blending words. When I sat down with him and showed him the very first lesson of blending short vowel ‘a’ words, the light bulb went off. He caught on so fast that it even surprised me! You could see that the missing link had been discovered and it all made sense to him finally. By the end of the day we were going through the first short vowel ‘a’ book and his mother was brought to tears when she discovered this as she was picking him up from school. He announced “I can read! I can read!” and he really could.
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