For students with Dyslexia and Learning Difficulties:
• spelling is confusing and doesn’t make sense
• words seem to run together
• reading is hard work and not fun
This is because of difficulties with:
• hearing sounds in words
• learning letter sound associations
• blending sounds together
• identifying beginning, middle and end sounds in words
• learning tricky sight words
• reading fluency
• retrieving words from vocabulary
Here is how Clever Speller helps:
• stories are full of words with a single focus sound
• all the ways to spell the focus sound are in one place
• stories provide the context for phonics to make sense
• easy to follow word family patterns
• focus sound words are grouped in lists from simple to complex
• tricky sight words are grouped into a focus sound so they DO make sense!
• rhyming stories help with predicting and memory
• recalling spelling is much easier from a story than from a spelling list
What you can do to help:
• first read the story all the way through then go back and listen for the focus sound words
• chat about words with green letters and notice how they all spell the focus sound
• say the green letters as a single sound when sounding out the word to spell
• start with simple List 1 words and separate into beginning, middle and end sounds
• learn tricky sight words in their word family groups rather than disconnected lists
• read the story out loud together, take in turns, predict the rhyme, read to others
• memorising the story will make it easy to recall how to spell words in everyday use
Most of all…enjoy reading together!