C.J. was about 1 and a half when we noticed his speech wasn't developing as fast or as clear as one would hope. We got his first evaluation done at 2 years and he was still average, but on the lower end. We were advised that he would more then likely have many new sounds emerge in the next six months. During that time I read and read to him, we practiced talking and I tried very hard to make him slow down and say things clearly. Also during this time he had his four front teeth removed. He was reevaluated at 2 years and 9 months. While he had learned many new things, he had also aged 9 months and was placed even lower on the scale. We were advised to receive speech therapy. We tried to go through the child care connections, but it was a mess, the directer quit, they had to reschedule 3 appointments. The one appointment we did have he didn't want to talk. Finally 6 months after that I contacted a private speech therapist and we began working with him on his speech, doing things to strengthen his tongue and jaw, practices to make him pull his lower jaw back and ways to pronounce certain sounds. We continue working on this daily.
One thing people don't realize is how hard it is to learn to read if you are not pronouncing a word correctly, for example my son thinks "really" starts with a "W" because he pronounces it "weally". So in addition to working on speech, we also work on the alphabet and proper pronouncement of each letter. We have sight words we practice. We also have a preschool book, where we identify what words start with what letters and practice drawing the letter.
I'm not a slave driver. I want him to excel, but how can I expect him to sounds things out if he can't say things correctly? So this is why we do this. It has also improved his fine motor skills, letter and name recognition.
The flash cards and preschool book I bought at Walmart. The sight words I made at home.
Ah,I have definitely dealt with the hurdle of poor pronunciation and its affect on spelling in the classroom!
ReplyDeleteOne other idea to add to the great things you're doing is the I Spy Game. We're all familiar with playing by giving descriptions of the object you spy as clues, but you can also give the beginning sound instead. "I spy something that starts with W." Or the ending sound, "I spy something with ends with T." It's an easy, fun game to play in the car, while waiting in line someplace, etc.:) You can always make a set of cards with pictures of things that start with a sound you're working on, too, or a box or bag of objects. If words starting with r are an issue, you can play "I Spy" with pictures of a rock, a rainbow, a reindeer, etc. If that's too easy, you can mix words that start with r and words that start with w together and have him sort them by beginning sound :)
R is a difficult letter. My friend's little girl is 9 and still has trouble with r's in certain words. I spoke with this little girl yesterday, and she's a very very bright girl, just difficulty, but it's slowly fixing itself. She pronounced r as a w in almost everything, and then said something about Thursday and pronounced it correctly. CJ will get there. Especially with you working on it with him and encouraging him as he improves and makes the effort. The I Spy game idea above is also a great idea.
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