How to teach phonics to child incapable of forming specific sounds -- is it possible?

[flmom79]

Our 3 1/2 year old has significant expressive delays (etiology unknown, investigation still ongoing, potential cranial nerve malformations suspected) that render him unable to make most vowel and consonant sounds.  I started teaching phonics with our older children after their third birthdays, but it's hard not to feel panicked in the case of the current preschooler because he simply physically cannot shape specific sounds and has no apparent prospect of being able to do so.  Has anyone successfully taught a child in this situation to read?  How did you do it?  

[HomeAgain]

I think you might have success with a multisensory approach, but keep your focus on ways he can respond to lessons.  Things like touching the right sound card, building words as you say sounds slowly, maybe drawing the letter in sand when you say the sound, matching the correct sentence to the picture....I think it would be slower, but programs like All About Reading where you can adapt to work with his strengths might be the way to go.

[maize]

Even deaf children are usually able to learn to read--and as you mentioned no hearing impairment I assume this child can hear all the sounds, just not produce them. If you are teaching him to sign as a communication tool it might be worth investigating reading approaches used with deaf children. He'll be at an advantage in associating sounds with symbols because he can hear them even though he may not be able to produce all of them.

[wendyroo]

All of my kids started reading when they still had significant speech delays. They were able to make most of the easier vowel and consonant sounds, but they still lacked many, many sounds.

First we focused on phonemic awareness of words they heard. Like HomeAgain suggest above, they would point to letters to indicate what sounds they heard at the beginning, end, or middle of words I said. They loved using funny yes/no buttons like these to tell me if two words I said rhymed. Our goal was to ensure they knew the sounds of all the letters (and eventually the common consonant and vowel teams).

Then I taught them blending only using sounds they could reliably produce. For us, those were the vowel sounds of short a and the oo in zoo, plus the consonants b, d, m, p, s and t. We hung out on this step for as long as we needed: blending with magnetic letters, blending by driving matchbox cars, blending as we walked on chalk letters, etc. Eventually they were able to confidently read all the logical permutations of those letters, both real and nonsense words (including nonsense words that sounded real like toom).

Once they were solid on blending the sounds they could say, then we moved on to blending some of the sounds that they could only hear in their heads. There was no way they could produce the c/k sound, so we practiced words like cap that they could say parts of, but only hear other parts of. We had the All About Spelling Phonogram Sounds app, so they could try having it say the c, and then them smoothly adding the -ap themselves. It was a stop gap measure until they could hear and blend all the sounds in their head.

All of my kids ended up able to read sounds they could not produce. In fact, eventually their reading helped their speaking a lot because it acted as a cue reminding them not to start cat with a t sound or that fish needed an sh at the end not an s.

[lewelma]

My son had auditory processing disorder and a speech disorder, where he was pronouncing most words wrong. It was easy to teach him to read; what was difficult was to teach him to spell.  Because it took 5 years to clean up the speech impediment, he mapped the wrong sounds to all the letters. So Cat would be dot, or train would be cheen. We used SWR: spelling to write and read, which is a very intensive phonics program, to clean up this mess. It took until he was about 12, but we were successful. 

Edited May 10 by lewelma

[flmom79]

4 hours ago, maize said:

Even deaf children are usually able to learn to read--and as you mentioned no hearing impairment I assume this child can hear all the sounds, just not produce them. If you are teaching him to sign as a communication tool it might be worth investigating reading approaches used with deaf children. He'll be at an advantage in associating sounds with symbols because he can hear them even though he may not be able to produce all of them.

Actually he is mostly deaf in one ear, but we *think* the other ear compensates a great deal.

[flmom79]

4 hours ago, wendyroo said:

All of my kids started reading when they still had significant speech delays. They were able to make most of the easier vowel and consonant sounds, but they still lacked many, many sounds.

First we focused on phonemic awareness of words they heard. Like HomeAgain suggest above, they would point to letters to indicate what sounds they heard at the beginning, end, or middle of words I said. They loved using funny yes/no buttons like these to tell me if two words I said rhymed. Our goal was to ensure they knew the sounds of all the letters (and eventually the common consonant and vowel teams).

Then I taught them blending only using sounds they could reliably produce. For us, those were the vowel sounds of short a and the oo in zoo, plus the consonants b, d, m, p, s and t. We hung out on this step for as long as we needed: blending with magnetic letters, blending by driving matchbox cars, blending as we walked on chalk letters, etc. Eventually they were able to confidently read all the logical permutations of those letters, both real and nonsense words (including nonsense words that sounded real like toom).

Once they were solid on blending the sounds they could say, then we moved on to blending some of the sounds that they could only hear in their heads. There was no way they could produce the c/k sound, so we practiced words like cap that they could say parts of, but only hear other parts of. We had the All About Spelling Phonogram Sounds app, so they could try having it say the c, and then them smoothly adding the -ap themselves. It was a stop gap measure until they could hear and blend all the sounds in their head.

All of my kids ended up able to read sounds they could not produce. In fact, eventually their reading helped their speaking a lot because it acted as a cue reminding them not to start cat with a t sound or that fish needed an sh at the end not an s.

Do you feel this approach would have worked had your children not been able to make any specific vowel or consonant sounds at all?  do you think their ability to make the simple ones carried them through the others, or do you feel that wasn't really relevant?

[wendyroo]

1 minute ago, flmom79 said:

Do you feel this approach would have worked had your children not been able to make any specific vowel or consonant sounds at all?  do you think their ability to make the simple ones carried them through the others, or do you feel that wasn't really relevant?

I think it was certainly helpful, though I don't know how much so.

I think for my kids it was also helpful that they understood themselves. When they said the word cat, it felt different to them than when they said the word tat...even though to us they were indistinguishable. So when they would work on Explode the Code, they would often sound out the words and phrases aloud to themselves, and even if the words and phrases did not sound correct to us, it would allow them to hear the correct words and pick out the matching pictures to show that they were properly decoding.

[Rosie_0801]

18 minutes ago, flmom79 said:

Actually he is mostly deaf in one ear, but we *think* the other ear compensates a great deal.

It doesn't compensate nearly as much as you'd hope.

When I was studying Auslan (Australian Sign Language) back in the day, they had us reading papers on how the Swedes actually bothered to educate their Deaf kids properly, which had them graduate fluent in written Swedish and English, and Swedish Sign Language. I don't know what methods they used, but it must be possible if they could do it.

[ieta_cassiopeia]

Not only is it possible to teach phonics to a student who can't produce some sounds, but depending on the cause, teaching phonics in a manner that the child can understand can sometimes (not always - it depends on exactly what's going on) improve the ability to produce sounds. Some autistic people learn to speak partially through learning phonics, because phonics provides written explicit cues for what the sounds could be (and, if done in a multi-sensory fashion, other clues as well).

I've read that Sweden teaches Deaf students bilingually and biculturally, and in some cases will admit hearing siblings to Deaf schools (which would make it easier for Deaf students with siblings to get practise in all their languages at home). Hearing parents of Deaf children also get access to 240 hours of education in Swedish sign language during the early years phase so that parents can help with establishing initial lines of communication. I believe that's the most generalisable take-home: establish a line of communication that makes sense to the child.