She was Born Deaf – But That Only Slows Her Down a Little
Addie dances in the door every Wednesday afternoon, her deep brown eyes sparking with excitement. She’s been coming to tutoring once a week for five months.
She quickly settles her 6-year-old energy and concentrates on what we are doing. Those brown eyes intently study my mouth as I tell her the next word for the phonemic awareness game we are playing. She needs to show me each individual sound she hears within each word using the colored squares on the caterpillar/train game boards in Silent Elephant “e”, Part 1, Phonemic Awareness. Her eyes analyze my mouth and face to absorb every movement and detail of the word.
It’s imperative that I thoroughly and meticulously teach Addie in a calm, quiet, loving environment. It’s equally imperative that I follow her lead as I move through the lessons. She must achieve mastery of each lesson before moving to the next in order to develop her strong foundation in phonemic awareness and her knowledge that she CAN read.
Her self-confidence is blossoming.
In these five months, Addie has mastered about 1/5 of Part 1:
Lesson 1-Two Sounds—Short Vowel First
Lesson 2-Two Sounds—Short Vowel Last
Lesson 2A-Two Sounds—Phoneme Isolation/Phoneme Substitution
Lesson 2B-Two Sounds—Phoneme Manipulation
Lesson 2C-Two Sounds—Individual Phoneme Blending Assessment
Lesson 3-Three Sounds—CVC—Short Vowel in the Middle
Lesson 4-Three Sounds—CVC—Short Vowel in the Middle-May have 3 Different Sounds or 2 Sounds the Same
Lesson 4A-Three Sounds—CVC—Initial Phoneme Substitution-Introduction to Rhyming
Lesson 4B-Three Sounds—CVC—Final Phoneme Substitution
This is an impressive accomplishment!
Addie was born deaf.
It wasn’t until she was 3 months old that she heard her first sound when she received her first hearing aids.
Her mom has shared her own frustrations, as Addie’s hearing aids were a challenge when she was an infant and toddler. They were more often than not broken or not functioning properly as Addie would often pull them out of her ears and suck on them. This, of course, lead to Addie hearing sporadically, which lead to her language development being sporadic as well.
Even now her hearing aids don’t always work properly. Sometimes they don’t quite fit tight enough because she is constantly growing. Once ordered, her new ones may take a month or more to arrive. This process causes continual gaps in her learning.
Even with this constant struggle to ensure her hearing aids are working, Addie has a great desire to learn to read! Watching her come alive as she gains the understanding that the individual sounds she is now hearing in words will lead her to reading makes my heart sing. We celebrate each minute step forward!
This April we celebrated a giant step when Addie first saw, and realized that she was seeing, a visual representation of rhyme. This happened on her caterpillar game board during Lesson 4A!
The brightly colored squares guided her to understand that rhyme in a word begins with the vowel sound and includes the ending sound(s). Only the beginning sound(s) change, so only the beginning color(s) changed on her game board.
Her whole body lit up with this understanding. She paused, and then those big, brown eyes shot to mine - she knew she knew! It was the first time Addie actually understood what rhyme sounds like. Her confidence in herself as a learner leapt forward. My eyes filled with joy.
I know this was the first time she actually grasped the concept of rhyming, because when I asked her mom if they had rhyming books at home, her mom replied, “No. She doesn’t understand rhyme.”
I could hardly contain my excitement!
“She just learned it!” I told her mom.
“Watch her do three new words on her game board.” Her mom was skeptical, but she watched Addie show the next three rhyming words on her game board.
Then Addie confidently answered my question, “How do you know these words rhyme?”
Mom was head-over-heels amazed that Addie truly had just learned what rhyme looks like and sounds like!
We had fun taking turns thinking of more rhyming words for the words displayed on her game board.
Since that wonderful day, Addie’s mom has purchased rhyming word cards from a teacher supply store, has borrowed rhyming games from Addie’s teachers at school, and has checked out lots of rhyming books from libraries.
Addie loves rhyme! Her little body wriggles with joy as she creates a rhyming game board and shouts out more rhyming words.
I’m also teaching Addie using the Partner Practice pages in Part 3, Short Vowels of Silent Elephant “e”. In mid-April she mastered all five short vowel sounds! We celebrated!
Short “e” sound was the most challenging one for her. She had to listen intently for the difference in the sounds of /e/ and /i/. She had to look in the mirror to watch her mouth’s movements. She had to concentrate on pulling down the center of her tongue to move from the /i/ sound to the /e/ sound. This is not unusual for young children or English language learners.
When I asked her what really helped her learn short “e”, she said, “I learned it from singing the Old McDonald song.”
Addie’s enthusiasm and excitement about learning to read, write and spell just bubbles out of her all of the time now!
She is solidifying the all-important foundation of reading—phonemic awareness. She is listening for and hearing the individual sounds that make up words.
My heart sings every time she progresses a little further, every time her eyes sparkle with the knowledge of what she has just understood for the first time.
Her mom says, “She used to just give up trying to read, write and spell, but now she always tries and giggles with happiness while working and bounces up and down when she gets a word right!”
Like Addie—keep a song in your heart!
P. S. Addie has achieved this magnificent success from tutoring only once a week with Silent Elephant “e”. Think of the progress she could be making if she were able to come twice a week. When children are able to come to tutoring twice a week, I see considerably faster progress learning skills and greater retention of skills that I’ve taught.
If you have further questions about phonemic awareness, feel free to contact us.