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someone nearing or in first grade, learning how to read can appear
magical and mysterious. Young children are often confused and discouraged
when they observe peers who "get" reading without effort, while they
struggle with the simplest text. |
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The
Reading Clinic shows these little ones that they can figure out how
to deal with the parts of the process so that they can master reading.
Using their own acute awareness, derived from sensory observation,
they learn not only how to read, but how to solve problems, breaking
a large task down into components.
As they discover and label how they make sounds, children can use
articulatory feedback, (feeling), to separate and blend the individual
sounds in syllables. The Reading Clinic plays into this by adapting
the *Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing® to
develop phonemic awareness for these younger students. When they understand
how to sequence and identify individual sounds, or phonemes, the symbol-sound
relationship becomes clearer, and children can start to unravel the
code.
While they are strengthening their awareness of phonetic processing,
we also help young children develop visual memory for letters, words
and patterns in words with a modified version of another * Lindamood -Bell® program,
* Seeing Stars®. Making a kinetic connection to letter formation,
they use a finger to "write" in the air and on surfaces, and begin
creating mental images of letters and words. As they can read more
sight words, children move more quickly through the words on the page,
and have less difficulty reproducing these words when they are spelling.
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At
The Reading Clinic, we demonstrate to young children that learning
to read does not have to be a daunting, incomprehensible and fearsome
task. Children also begin learning a valuable lesson for life that
overcoming difficulties is a matter of taking that first step, then
following it with the next. |
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