A typical dyslexic child’s spelling of the phrase, “Sally’s oven might explode!”
Learning from mistakes
We teachers and tutors learn a lot about our students from their mistakes. Often
we learn that a student hears words differently from how they are actually
pronounced. It is common for a dyslexic student to have an “ah-ha” moment during
lessons as it suddenly becomes clear to him or her that the word is “train,” and not
“chrain” as they had been hearing it their whole lives. Then we set about correcting
that misconception.
Retraining the ears
Students need to hear the sounds correctly to be able to spell correctly. In the
picture, we see that the student is hearing the v sound as an f in the word “oven.”.
We create a drill ring card to provide daily practice with a clue word to connect the
sound with. We play games with the two sounds to clarify which is which. And we
listen closely to be sure the student is correcting the mistake.
It all takes time
You may wonder why a child needs to work on a phonogram card again, or why
it stays in the ring so very long. The answer is he or she needs lots of practices, and
drill ring is one of those ways.