1. Segmenting compound words and sentences into words. 

• The students say ‘toothbrush’ without a ‘tooth’; ‘rainbow’ without ‘bow’, ‘girlfriend’ without ‘girl’.
• The students listen to the teacher reading a sentence and place a marker from the left to the right for each word heard.

The     fat        cat      is         on        the      mat

 

2. Segmenting and blending syllables.

 

 

 

3. Recognizing and creating rhymes.

• The students name the objects that are in the pictures and say their names aloud. Then they listen to the teacher saying pairs of words and if they rhyme the students raise their thumbs up, circle the pictures and colour them.

 

• The students name the objects in each row and say their names aloud. They circle the picture whose name does not rhyme with the other names.

 

• Creating rhymes. The students name the pictures in each row and say their names aloud. In each row they draw a picture whose name rhymes with the names of the other two pictures.

 

4. Identifying initial and final sounds in words.

•  The students name the objects in the pictures in each row; say their names aloud. Then they listen to the teacher saying them; if the words start with the same sound the students raise their thumbs up, circle them and colour them.

 

• The students say aloud the names of the objects in each row and choose a picture whose name doesn’t start with the same sound as the other names.

 

• The students listen to the words and identify the sounds at the beginning.

  Do ‘cup’ and ‘cake’ begin the same?

  Do ‘sun’ and ‘ship’ begin the same?

  Do ‘shop,’ ‘ship,’ ‘sheep,’ ‘shoe’ start with the same sound?

  Do ‘shop,’ ‘cheap,’ ‘shoe,’ ‘ship’ start with the same sound?

  Do ‘pen,’ ‘pet,’ ‘pill,’ ‘pot’ start with the same sound?

• The students listen to the words and identify the sounds at the end.

Do ‘pet,’ ‘pot,’ ‘cat,’ ‘mat’ end with the same sound?

Do ‘sun,’ ‘man,’ ‘gone,’ ‘goat’ end with the same sound?

5. Segmenting and blending individual sounds in words.

• The students look at the pictures, listen to the teacher saying words, count the phonemes and place a marker from the left to the right for each phoneme heard. Later letters can be put on tokens.
• The students look at the pictures, listen to the teacher saying words, count the phonemes and cut the pictures into the number of pieces corresponding to the number of phonemes.
• The students listen to the sets of words and decide whether they have the same sound in the middle. Tokens are used to represent sounds in words. For example: ‘lip,’ ‘rib,’ ‘flip,’ ‘chick’ or ‘pet,’ ‘pin,’ ‘sun,’ ‘bun’ or ‘sun,’ ‘bun,’ ‘cup,’ ‘nut.’

 

6. Manipulating sounds (deleting, adding, and substituting).

•  Leave off the beginning sound of a given word to make a new word. For example: ‘pat’ — it starts with /p/ and ends with /at/, take the first sound away and it says /at/. Take /k/ out of ‘cat’ and it says /at/. Say ‘mat’ without /m/. What word will be left if you take /p/ off pat? What is missing in ‘eat’ that you can hear in ‘meat’?

• Leave off the end sound of a given word to make a new word. The procedure is similar to the one used with initial sounds.

• Listen to the word and substitute the initial sound. What is the beginning sound in ‘cat’? Say ‘cat’ with /h/ instead of /k/. What is the beginning sound in ‘hen’? Say ‘hen’ with /p/ instead of /h/.

 

More activities and tips for English teachers with dyslexic students: coming soon!

Source: Dyslexia in the  Foreign Language Classroom, by Joanna Nijakowska