Articles & Reviews

"Phonix in a Box is a fun way to stimulate awareness of those tricky vowel and consonant blends that are so challenging for many of the children I see
for reading and spelling difficulties. Children with these difficulties hate practising the spelling rules, but are keen to get out the cards and play Snap, Rummy or Go fish! and they learn while they are playing. The cards are
good quality, with clear, bright pictures that are culturally appropriate. A wonderful therapy tool!"

- Julia Travis (Speech Therapist)

“Phonix in a Box has proved to be a hit in therapy with my students!
The children love the colourful pictures and the games are varied and fun to use in therapy and at home.
The cards have been grouped into sound families so well that phonics has become a fun and easy activity in therapy rather than a dull one.
I enjoy using Phonics in a Box as a therapy tool and highly recommend all teachers, therapists and families to have a set”

Nicky Smithers (Speech-Language Therapist)

Thank you so much for sending Phonix in a Box so quickly. I received the parcel on Wednesday and started to use the boxes yesterday. My older children who are struggling to read loved the cards and immediately wanted to play the games - so we are definitely going to have lots of fun! I have a little girl with apraxia and she noticed the boxes when she came in for therapy and wanted to see what was inside - she enjoyed the pictures so much and started to talk about them spontaneously(we are working on sentence expansion) - I was so surprised because she does not normally expand her utterances.

Regards, Sharon Burger (Speech-Language Therapist)

Games to play with
Phonix in a Box cards

In the pre-school classroom, phonemic awareness activities can be weaved into everyday routines and tasks. The objective of any phonemic awareness activity should be to facilitate children’s ability to perceive that their speech is made- up of a series of sounds. It is the breaking down and manipulation of spoken/oral language. The focus of the activities should be on sounds in speech. These activities should fit into a meaning-based framework. Phonemic awareness should not be addressed as an abstract isolated skill to be acquired through drill type activities. It can be a natural, functional part of literacy experiences throughout the day. As Hallie Yopp stated (Yopp, 1995) "Phonemic awareness is not an end to itself rather, it is one aspect of literacy development."

Phonemic awareness based games:

Identifying and Isolating Phonemes:

Posting: Stick letters of the alphabet on 5 boxes. Cut a slit in each box to make it look like a post box. Hand out picture cards to learners. They must listen to the word on the card, identify what sound the word begins or ends with and choose which box to put the card into. This game also strengthens a learner’s ability to match phonemes and graphemes.
Bean Bag Toss: Lay out picture cards face down on the floor. Learners toss the bean bag and identify the initial sound of the picture card it lands on.
Slam: Sit the learners in a circle and place some picture cards in the middle of the circle. Learners put their hands on their heads. The teacher shouts out a sound. The first learner to touch the picture that starts with the same sound given gets to keep the card.

Blending Activities:

Blending requires learners to manipulate individual sounds by combining them to form a word. Given a series of isolated sounds (e.g. /b/-/a/-/t/), learners blend them together (e.g. bat)

Guessing Game: "What am I thinking of?" This game encourages learners to blend orally spoken sounds together. The teacher selects cards from a category and then speaks in a segmented fashion the sounds of a particular item in that category. For example in category of clothing – sounds may be /h/-/a/-/t/ Categories may include theme words as an extension of integrated literacy experiences.
Hand out picture cards. Teacher breaks up a word into sounds i.e. s-u-n. Learners blend sounds to make the correct word and the learner who has the card that matches, places it on the board.
Grab bag: fill a bag with cards and place them in a bag. Choose a card and say, "I see a c-a-t in here. Who knows what I see?"

Rhyming Activities:

Model rhyming first, by saying, "I can rhyme a word with /at/ that begins with /f/. Can you tell me what it is?" "I can rhyme a word with /at/ that begins with /s/. Can you tell me what it is? Pictures can be used as visual cues for rhyme recognition activities and can be used during the modelling phase of instruction. The teacher can present 3 pictures and ask the learner to select and say the two that rhyme. A variation would be to display two non rhyming pictures and have the learner select the one that rhymes with a word being said by the teacher.
Odd Word Out is a game in which the teacher presents four words, three of which rhyme, and the learner determines which word is the odd one that doesn't belong with the others. (e.g. lead, bead, pill, seed)
Initial rhyme recognition can be reinforced by direct modelling of words e.g. (nose-rose) and (bed-car). To make a game of this, use a happy face symbol for a rhyming pair and a sad face symbol for non-rhyming pair; or a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It is important to have the learners repeat the rhyming pairs to reinforce the verbal production of rhymed words.
Rhyming Pair Concentration: Place the picture cards facing upwards on the carpet. Name the pictures out loud. Find two that rhyme.
Basketball: Show a picture card to a learner. If s/he can think of a word that rhymes correctly then s/he can have a shot at the basket. (or throw a ball into the dustbin)
Partners: The teacher sorts through cards first and finds all the rhyming pairs. Hand the cards out to a group of learners. The learners take it in turns to say their word and their “rhyming partner” i.e. the learner who has a word that rhymes, must match up with them and sit together.
Match a pair- play in small groups. Place the cards face down on the carpet. Learners take it in turns to find rhyming pairs or words starting with the same sound.

Sound Matching Activities:

Using the picture cards, learners are asked to decide which of several words begins with a given sound or to generate a word beginning with a particular sound. You may ask for a specific sound like /s/; you may ask students to generate their own examples of words beginning with the sound like /s/. Teachers say the phoneme sounds not the letter names.
Word to word matching: Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?
Fishing game: put clips on the cards, lay them on the carpet, use a dowel stick to make a fishing rod and learners take it in turns to “catch fish”. They have to tell you what the word starts with or give you a word that rhymes with it or give you another word that starts with the same sound as the card.
Snap: The learners take turns drawing a card from a face-down pile and placing it on a face-up pile. When a newly drawn card has the same beginning (or end) sound as the top card in the face-up pile, the first learner to identify the match by saying "snap" collects the pile.

Segmentation Activities: Segmenting the sounds in a word is one of the more difficult of phonemic awareness tasks to perform, yet it is highly related to later success in decoding words. Segmenting refers to the act of isolating the sounds in a spoken word.

Pronounce a word and tell the learners that this is the fast way to say the word, and give an example of the slow way. For example, football (fast way) and f-oo-t-b-a-ll (slow way). Give the learners another word eg. bed and ask if they can say it the slow way (b-e-d).
Use a picture of a train composed of an engine, passenger car, and a caboose. Three connecting boxes can be drawn under each component. Explain that words have beginning, middle, and end sounds just like the train has a beginning, middle and end. Demonstrate by slowly articulating a CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word (e.g. p-i-g) and pointing to the box corresponding to the position of each sound in the word.
Use interlocking blocks as a visual demonstration of segmentation.
Cups and counters: Have 3 cups with counters. The number of cups corresponds to the number of sounds in a target word. Take a card and say the word slowly, breaking it up into sounds. Each time you say a sound, put a counter or button in the cup. Hand out the cards to the learners and they take it in turns to say each sound in their word and put the counters in the cups. Note: When working with the segmentation of entire words, it is best to use words of no more than three sounds (phonemes) as this is the most difficult task for young learners.

Phoneme counting and positioning:

Have a train with 3 parts beginning, middle and end. Put words in a bag, learners pick a card, the teacher asks “where does the /t/ sound come in the word cat?” The learner puts it at the end of the train to match the position of the sound in the word.
Hand out the cards to learners and ask them to count the number of sounds in their word.

Deleting phonemes:

Play a game of "sound take-away". The teacher models how to orally segment a word into the "target" sound plus everything else and then takes the sound away. For example “chair”. It starts with /ch/ and it ends with air; take the first sound away and it says air." Practice this using visual assistance until the learners can delete sounds with a simple prompt: "Say ball without the /b/".
Learners who have difficulty with deleting sounds might benefit from visual clues. By placing two coloured blocks side-by-side, the teacher can designate one as representing the target sound and the other as representing the remainder of the word: "I'm going to use these blocks to say moon. This (red block) says moo and this yellow block says /n/. The learner is then asked what the first block said when the second block is removed. Use the picture cards as targets for the desired words.

Odd word out:

Have three of four picture cards that start with the same sound. Have learners identify the pictures, so everyone uses the same labels and exaggerate the initial sounds. Add in a card that starts with a different sound. Sing/say "One of these things just doesn't belong here, one of these things is just not the same. Can you tell which thing just doesn't belong here? Before I finish this game?"
Start this game using the picture cards as a visual aid and then take the pictures away to strengthen auditory skills.

Sound-letter matching:

Hand out cards. Teacher has a bag of letters and picks one out. She asks “Who has a word with the letter g in it? What sound does it make in your word? Those kids can stand up or take a new card.
Rope Jump: You need a rope for this game. Learners stand behind each other in a line. Hold a rope (have a learner hold the other end) at a height that the learners should be able to jump over. On the other side of the rope spread out some picture cards. Show a letter to the first learner. S/he has to jump over the rope, pick up the correct picture card that begins with that letter and identify the sound of the letter. For other rounds you can hold the rope down low, so learners have to crawl/roll under.
Musical Chair Alphabet: Place chairs in the form of musical chairs with alphabet flashcards placed on them. Give each learner a picture card. Start the music, when the music stops, the learners have to find the letter that matches the first letter on their picture card and say the sound of the letter.
Race Track: Lay out the picture cards like a race track with a start and finish line. Learners play in pairs or teams. Learner 1 rolls a dice and moves a counter along the track. The learner must say the name of the picture card landed on and isolate the beginning or ending sound. Variation: put in some 'throw again' cards (e.g. brightly coloured cards) and a nominate a 'crash' number on the die (e.g. if learners throw a 6, they crash and must stay where they are and miss a turn.

Language/Vocabulary based games:

Animal Game: Choose animal cards without showing the learners. Then tell them that they are going to receive 3 clues, so they need to listen carefully and guess what you are describing. Alternative: Hand out a picture card to each person and each learner takes it in turns to describe his card to the class.
e.g. I can gallop. I have a saddle. 3. You can ride on my back. (horse).
Shopping: This can be used with a wide range of picture cards (food pictures work well). Gather all the learners and show them all the flashcards you have. Put them in your “shop” where the learners cannot see the pictures easily. Give the learners a “shopping list of 3-4 items”. They must go shopping and bring back the cards on the shopping list. This is a useful to strengthen memory strategies.
Vanishing cards: Place a number of picture cards in front of the learners. Give them a few moments to memorise the pictures and then tell them to close their eyes. Take away one of the cards and then tell the learners to open their eyes again. The first learner to guess the missing card can win that card (for 1 point) and take away a card in the next round.
Charades: Have a learner come to the front of the class and show a picture card to him. The learner then acts out that word and the first person to guess can be the next player. This works very well with action verbs. Variation: divide the class up into teams - the first learner to guess, wins a point for his/her team.
Concentration: You need 2 sets of flashcards for this game. Place both sets face down on the floor. Learners take turns in turning over 2 cards (saying the cards aloud). If the cards match then the learner keeps the cards. If the cards are different, the cards are turned back over again in their original places. The learner with the most pairs at the end of the game is the winner. Alternative: Find cards that belong together i.e. knife and fork.
Follow the sequence: Each student has a set of cards. The teacher places his/her cards in a particular order in two or three rows, and the learners copy the pattern. Alternatively the teacher calls out the sequence of cards i.e. dog-cat-horse-giraffe. The learners have to put their cards in that order.
Cross the River: Place cards facing up on the floor in a winding manner. Each card represents a stepping stone in the river, as learners must say rhyming words/sentences/description etc in order to step on it and cross the river.

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Developing a love for Reading

Author: Lindsay Brown (Speech-Language Therapist)

Reading skills lay the foundation for your child’s academic success and will benefit your child throughout his life.
Reading comprehension ensures understanding of the written word and opens the doors for future success. Helping children develop an understanding of letters, words, and their meanings begins long before starting school.
Reading books to your child stirs the senses, inspires imagination, and sparks a love of reading that will last forever.
Parents can encourage their children to read and enjoy books in many simple and creative ways.

Develop and use many different opportunities that will encourage your child to read:

Use your local and school libraries as the most economical way to fill your child’s world with great books that are age-appropriate, current, and support your child’s interests.
Take your child with you to bookshops to choose his own book.
Purchase books that your child is interested in (i.e. music, young celebrities, or sports, etc.).
Expose your child to a variety of books and other reading materials around the house (i.e. magazines, comic books, coffee table books, library books, and newspapers).
When shopping, encourage your child to help you by reading labels, food containers, signs, adverts, billboards, and any other printed materials.
Buy or borrow educational games that help build vocabulary skills, visual memory, auditory processing and sound awareness skills. Many schools run a Games Library and these are a great way to have access to a variety of educational games.
Play educational card games that focus on teaching children phonic skills. The more your child is exposed to words, letters and sounds, the more confident they will become with reading.
Some children may enjoy a children’s book club where they can share their favourite stories with their friends and have the opportunity to learn about new authors and good reading books.
Play word games with your child during routine events or moments in the car. For example, “Name all the fruits you can” or “Think of all the words that rhyme with cat” or “How many words do you know that start with the /d/ sound?”
With older children, spelling games, crossword puzzle books, word searches, etc. are fun as well as great vocabulary builders. To avoid frustration, start with puzzles that are not too difficult.
Use magnetic or felt letters and boards to build words, write messages, build sentences, or practise the week’s spelling words.
Create a reading corner with special shelves full of books, a chair, and sufficient light. Make sure the shelves are easily accessible.
Keeping a journal or diary of holidays, daily activities, outings etc is a lovely way to instill good reading and writing skills.
Subscribe to a child’s magazine i.e. Kids National Geographic and encourage your child to read to you from the magazine. Let your child scan the magazine and choose titles, pictures, jokes, or whatever interests him to read.
Encourage your older child to read to younger siblings, friends, or other family members. It is not a good idea to ever force a child to read to the family “for entertainment” if he is uncomfortable reading aloud or is not confident in his reading ability.

Reading to and with your child:

Allow your child to choose an easy book. Some parents are concerned that their child requests the same book every night. Reading experts explain that reading books at a lower level or the same books over and over helps increase a child’s confidence and fluency. It is very normal for a young child to request the same book and the repetition of the words is an important part of developing prediction and thinking skills.
Read to your child as often as you can. Some specialists believe that all children should be read to every day until the age of 12 years. Choose a time where you will not be disturbed and get comfortable together. Reading provides a special bonding time with your child and is a vital part of each day. For many children, this time is an opportunity to have your undivided attention and it allows them the time and space to talk through their feelings and “fill their emotional tanks”.
Read different books together as it exposes your child to different forms of print. Highlight the different punctuation marks i.e. when you see a question mark or an exclamation mark, explain how your voice changes. Talk about capital letters and full stops.
By reading together your child will also learn to read from left to right and will become familiar with different story formats. This introduction to reading is an important tool for when they learn to read independently.
Children love to fill in the missing words from a familiar story. This is another important strategy that teaches children to make predictions about what will happen next.
When reading with an older child, keep the story flowing by offering to read every alternate page, paragraph, or sentence. Paired reading is also a useful way to develop a child’s confidence and enjoyment of reading.
Always provide positive reinforcement for your child and praise him for the progress that he makes with reading expression, fluency, vocabulary, and word recognition.
As your child learns to read, stop after a few pages and ask him a few questions about what he has read to ensure comprehension of the story.
When your older child is reading, periodically interrupt and ask questions to develop higher-level thinking and reasoning. For example “How are these two girls similar?” “What do you think will happen next?” “How would you feel in this situation?” or, “How do you think the story should end?”

“Parents are able to set the best examples for good reading habits. Children emulate the actions of their parents. Parents are their children’s greatest and most influential teachers. When your child sees his parents reading for enjoyment, he will assume that reading is a fun and natural experience. The rewards of good reading skills last a lifetime.” Becky L. Spivey, M.Ed. (from www.superduperinc.com)

Reference:

Many ideas were obtained and adapted from Becky L. Spivey’s article: Helping Children Develop a Love for Reading. (available on the Super Duper website)

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Is My Child Ready to Read

Written by Lindsay Brown

There is much controversy regarding the age a child should learn to read.
I strongly believe that it is more important to develop a child's pre-literacy skills before teaching him to read formally. These pre-literacy skills include many aspects of development, but the area that Speech-Language Therapists focus on is referred to as phonemic awareness. This is defined as "The ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds" (Yopp, 1992).

Research has shown that a child who has sound, well-established phonological skills will develop better literacy skills at school. Phonological awareness has been shown to be a better predictor of reading success than performance on intelligence tests.

These skills can be developed through games, reading stories and incidental learning experiences at home and at school. So many foundational skills need to be established before a child is given flash cards and required to learn to read the words. By developing your child's phonological skills in a fun, exciting way; you are giving your child the necessary auditory strategies to assist him to read at a later stage. I believe that by teaching your children these solid foundational skills you will give your child "the wings to fly" in school.

Phonological skills should be encouraged informally during the pre-school years. "Proper reading" should take place when a child has developed the necessary auditory perceptual and visual perceptual pre-literacy skills. If a 5 year old child shows an interest in learning to read, I don't believe one should hold that child back. Most children seem to be more ready to learn to read competently between 6 and 7 years.

Foundational skills for literacy:

Naming the letters of the alphabet

Expose your child to familiar printed words and identify the letters by their correct names. In order to spell a word effectively a child needs to know the names of the letters that occur in that word. Alphabet puzzles, blocks, magnetic letters and foam letters are all fun ways to introduce your child to the 26 letters of the alphabet.

Identifying the sounds that letters represent.

In addition to children naming the 26 letters, they should also become familiar with the 44 sounds in English i.e. most letters do not make one sound e.g. ‘c’ makes a /k/ sound in cat and a /s/ sound in ceiling. It is important to make your child aware of the different sounds that letters and letter combinations can make. Children are used to recognising the names of their friends and this is a useful place to start to show them how letters represent different sounds e.g Charlotte- the ch is making a /sh/ sound, Christopher- the ch is making a /k/ sound etc.
This is a critical step to develop in the reading process. If a child is unable to recognise a letter and identify the sound (or sounds) that it represents, he will struggle to learn to read.
Choose a letter of the alphabet and write the letter on a brown paper bag. Collect items around the house that begin with that sound. Remember to isolate the beginning sound only i.e. when saying /b/ don't say /ba/ as you are then adding a vowel sound. Start with easy sounds that can be prolonged i.e. /m/, /r/, /s/, /f/

Segmenting words into syllables

Children should learn that sentences are made up of separate words and that words can be broken into syllables and eventually into sounds.
Play games to clap the syllables in words or beat a drum to represent each syllable i.e. mac-a-ro-ni

Blending words and sounds

This crucial skill is often referred to as auditory synthesis. A child learns to blend words together first. Once he is competent doing this, he will learn to blend syllables i.e. wheel-ba-rrow and finally to blend sounds. Without this skill, reading will be very difficult.
Start with 2 words that can be blended to make a compound word i.e. rain+bow= rainbow. A 6 year old can start to blend 2 or 3 letters i.e. m-e= me or c-a-t = cat

Rhyming

This seems to be a skill that many children are no longer familiar with and yet it is such a necessary pre-literacy skill to develop. It allows your child to learn to “play” with sounds and to recognise ending sound patterns.
Read books like “Dr. Seuss” to your child and emphasise the words that rhyme. Match rhyming words, think of your own rhyming words, complete Nursery Rhymes and make up your own silly rhymes.

Isolating sounds in words

Play "I Spy" with your child in the car to encourage him to listen to and identify the beginning sound in words. Once he is confident with this, practise isolating the final sounds in words.

Discriminating between contrasting sounds

A child needs to be able to differentiate between sounds in order to spell effectively.
Play musical instruments with your child and encourage him to identify loud/soft; high/low; fast/slow sounds. Listen to and identify environmental sounds. Make up silly sentences and ask your child to correct your mistakes.

The implications of consolidating foundation skills:

Some children have excellent auditory and visual memory skills and seem to learn to read quickly. A child, however, can not rely solely on memory skills and if sufficient foundational skills have not been established, they will not develop the necessary strategies to assist them with spelling and reading.
Difficulties may only manifest in the later grades. As the load and complexity of phonic work increases, children without phonological awareness and auditory perceptual strategies will struggle with their literacy.

Reference:
Yopp, H. K. (1992). Developing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children.

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