Multisensory Reading Clinic

 Phonological Skills

Predict Reading Success and At-risk Students

 

Phonological skills predict reading success—and identify at-risk students early. We can even distinguish a strong reader from a struggling one simply by assessing their phonological skills. The answer is as simple as A, B, C… and 1, 2, 3!

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Phonological skills are not only the best predictor of reading success—they are also the most effective, easiest, fastest, and least expensive way to identify students who are at risk.

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What exactly are phonological skills? They are the ability to identify, manipulate, and remember the sounds in words—connecting, removing, adding, or separating them. For example: • Connecting the sounds /s/ /m/ /a/ /sh/ = smash • Removing the sound /n/ from gland  = glad • Adding the sound /s/ at the beginning of witch = switch • Separating the sounds in shower = /sh/ /ow/ /er/.

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Phonological skills also include awareness of the sounds, syllable types, and spelling patterns that make up words. Fluency grows directly from this foundation and is one of the clearest ways to tell a good reader from a poor one. If a student can manipulate sounds confidently, you can predict strong reading success. If he struggles with sound manipulation, it signals he will likely has difficulty learning to read. This principle holds true for any language with an alphabetic writing system—including English and French—because these languages represent speech at the sound level.

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Why does this matter? When children learn to read English, they must first master phonemes (the smallest sounds), not the letters of the alphabet. The letters become useful later for more advanced concepts, such as the vowel-consonant-e (silent e) pattern in words like cake, zone, ride, and cube.

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By teaching children to blend (connect) sounds, they can read and spell words they have never seen before. For example: /m/ /a/ /n/ = man

You cannot get the same result by simply “connecting the letters m-a-n.” Teaching children to read and spell well really is that simple!

 

Visit our shop to discover our proven workbooks from our more than 10 years of 100% success in literacy intervention, remediation and prevention that make mastering these skills fun, fast, and effective for every child!

 

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