Once children have a basic vocabulary in English and know their letter sounds, we begin to move on to constructing words. We use the movable alphabet to use sight and touch to teach language.

When students feel comfortable constructing words we begin decoding words, or reading. We start with words they are familiar with and begin to teach them to sound out the letters, repeating the sounds faster and faster until they are able to piece them together as words. We also take the children’s interests into consideration when introducing work.

Winnie can already write her name and knows the letter sounds. She takes out a group of pictures of three letter words of vocabulary she knows such as pig, sun, mop etc. She looks at the picture and says the word slowly breaking it down sound by sound. “pig puh,puh,puh…P!” She takes out a p and continues until she has spelled the word. She checks her work by looking at the back of the picture where the word pig is written. Once she has become comfortable with this, we add to the challenge by asking her to write the word herself instead of using the letters.

Mitch is an active five year old. We will write a series of action words such as jump, sit, hug, etc. on pieces of paper. We then explain to Mitch that each word has an action he can do. We ask him to sound out the letters, faster and faster to make the word, then perform the action.