Sight words and sounds

Sight Words vs Phonics | The Secret Stories

The Stanford University Study on Sight Words and The Brain

The study by Stanford University on sight words and the brain notes that as long as participants used the letter-sound patterns, they were able to read words they had never seen before; and more importantly, that there is no need to memorize what can be read (McCandliss & Noble, 2016).

This study shows why underscoring the traditionally slow pace of existing reading curriculum and phonics instruction with Secret Stories® is so important—particularly at the earliest grade levels—as it provides a way for learners to actually understand the sounds that letters make so that they can read words instead of memorize them.

The Importance of Phonics in Decoding

Knowing the Secrets empowers kids to decode approximately 95% of the most commonly memorized sight words by applying what they know about letter behavior to predict their most likely sounds.

This study, however, may seem of little value to those teaching without the Secrets in early grade classrooms, where overreliance on sight words is far too frequent, due to early learners’ gross lack of skills in comparison to the required text level assessments. To compensate, beginning readers must memorize hundreds of sight words before the end of second grade, often forcing teachers to prioritize teaching the “reading” over teaching the reader.

Beginning grade learners own so little of the alphabetic code that it’s virtually impossible for them to make sense of the many different sounds that letters make when they come together in words. To compensate, teachers will often rely on the rote memorization of sight words to help students “read.”

Rote memorization is not only developmentally inappropriate for early grade learners, but requires a vast amount of instructional time, energy and resources (assistant and volunteer time, activities, material, etc. ) It is also far from ideal from a brain based learning perspective.

The Brain On Sight Words

“Quite apart from anything the teacher does… the student, being human, is a pattern finder, and a pattern maker…” — Dr. David Bronson

The brain is often referred to as the ultimate pattern-making machine, seeking and storing memories based on patterns, or repeated relationships between ideas. Simply put, patterning is the brain’s way of doing things… and Secret Stories® takes full advantage of this.

Secret Stories® feeds the brain’s natural inclination to seek patterns when learning to read by aligning patterns of letter behavior to patterns of kid behavior. Developmentally, it is much easier for very young learners to pattern-out (i.e. make sense of) “behaviors” than abstract phonics patterns. Knowing the “secrets” about letters’ behavior allows beginning and struggling readers to easily predict their most and next most likely sounds in unknown words, just as they would the behavior of their friends and classmates.

Secret Stories® “feeds” the brain’s hunger for patterns when learning to read.

What Exactly

is a Sight Word?

Sight words are words that are recognized “by sight,” rather than sounded-out. All words eventually become sight words for experienced readers. For beginning readers, however, a great deal of time and energy is often spent learning sight words, known as “high-frequency” words.

High-frequency words are words that are the most commonly occurring in print. Fry and Dolch Words are examples of high frequency words.

Why Sight Words Don’t Always Work

While many of the listed pre-primer and primer words are easily decodable with letters making sounds that beginning readers would expect, those that are highlighted contain Secrets, which when taught traditionally as phonics “rules” span three to four grade level years to learn. This is far too long to make learners wait for the whole code (Allington, 2016).

“Typically, the first 100 high frequency aren’t mastered by most kids until Thanksgiving or so of first grade… and that is with considerable effort.”—Dr.Tim Shanahan

For example, some children do not even have a concept of a word or understanding of the word boundaries in print and how these map to letters, and yet they are memorizing letter sequences in “sight words.”

Additionally, a great deal of sight word instruction occurs before children even have a concept of how letters actually come together to make words. Instructional emphasis at the earliest grade levels is on memorizing random letter sequences, rather than learning how to decode easily decodable text. Before beginning learners even understand the alphabetic principle they are “calling” words. Without a concept of word or alphabetic insight, children will have the mistaken impression that words are unsystematic, making learning not only inefficient (Duke, 2016), but in total opposition with how our brains learn best, which is patterning.

Additionally, rote memorization requires brain storage, which is not limitless. In deciding what to remember, our brains ask “Do I need this?… Does it make sense?” If not, the information is relegated to the “use it or lose it” system, for which every learner has a unique threshold for how many times they must use a skill so as not to lose it.

Most often, it is the learners who need the most “use-it” time who get the least, marking the beginning of what quickly emerges as an “un-level playing field” for struggling readers. Kids who can seem to be learning to read can suddenly hit a wall in second grade or third grade when the brain’s finite storage for memorized words runs out. But kids who know the Secrets don’t have to memorize sight words. They can just read them.

Secret Stories® vs. Sight Words

Teach the READER, Not the Reading!

The “prize” for memorizing a sight word is ONE word.

The prize for learning a Secret is HUNDREDS!

**Which would you rather do?
Kids who know the Secrets have early access to high leverage phonics skills that would otherwise take years to acquire.** Underscoring the traditionally slow pace of phonics skill introduction in the reading series (or adopted phonics program) with Secret Stories® saves teachers and students countless hours of instructional time, allowing them to get twice as far in half the time, and with half the effort.

Wanna Know the “Secret” for Making Sight Words Stick?

Don’t Memorize them….just READ Them!

There Is An Easier Way to Learn Sight Words – Raising Robust Readers

Road Map for READing Sight Words

Wow, you have distilled, into one easy-to-read-and-understand article, years of study on my part to figure out how best to teach high-frequency words. .. I got my master's in reading so I could teach anyone to read. And here I am 14 years later, still learning... this is a fabulous resource- Thank You!
Jennifer N. Masters Degree, Reading

The "Dolch sight words list" was originally compiled in 1936 and then published in 1948. Sight words have been ingrained in our educational system since. Many people, including educators, think sight words need to be memorized because they cannot be sounded out. And they can't!--if you use a one letter/one sound correspondence!!!! But, in fact, all but a handful of sight words can be read using the power of the phonogram code.

No More Sight Words!

Many children who learn the code, even before entering school, are able to read most of these words without memorizing them. But once children start school, they are expected to memorize around 95 sight words by the end of kindergarten. Wordy refers to this method as “Drill and Dry. ” DRILL your children with flashcards. Then DRY their tears when frustration and early failure sets in. Not a happy approach--for child or parent.

There is an Easier Way to Learn Sight Words

Sight Word Syllables

Every sight word makes one of 6 syllable patterns. The pattern determines the sound of the vowel. How much easier it is to learn these 6 patterns and 72 phonograms. Your children will learn how to read thousands of words instead of 220.

The Six Silly Syllables

OPEN: At the end of an open syllable, no consonant is found. The vowel at the end will say its name and make a long vowel sound.
CLOSED: In a closed syllable, the vowel is short ‘cause a consonant closes it in. This syllable has just one vowel and a consonant at the end.
MAGIC E: In a Magic e syllable, at the end you’ll see a vowel and a consonant and silent letter e. Standing next to the consonant, magic e can claim, “I’m strong enough to help that vowel be long and say its name.”
BOSSY R: If the Bossy r syllable is pushy with his roar, r and his neighbor vowel say er, ar, or.
VOWEL BUDDY: In the Vowel Buddies syllable where two vowels are found, together they will make only one vowel or vowel-like sound.
CONSONANT-LE: The Consonant-le syllable is at the end of words you’ll see. That consonant is followed by an l and silent e.

Organize them by syllable types to help children read and learn them.

Most sight words can be read and correctly spelled using phonogram sounds, syllable clues and spelling clues. Organize and teach sight words according to their syllable type so children begin to recognize the patterns. Group phonograms that make the same sound together. For example: all, call, fall, walk, and want all make the third sound of /a/. Have children practice writing and reading them.

Empower children to read rather than struggle to memorize these words. Children will ‘see’ the similar patterns and hear the vowel sound placement within the words. When new words come home, add them under the proper syllable type.

What if I find a word that I can’t explain?

English is well structured and logical. Rarely do we find an odd spelling that cannot be explained. Often, the word being questioned is from another language which does not conform to the written English Code. Some words have been with us such a long time that they are no longer pronounced the way they are spelled. Wordy just explains it this way; "Sometimes words are like people; they misbehave and do not always follow the rules."

Wordy just explains it this way; "Sometimes words are like people; they misbehave and do not always follow the rules."

Wordy’s Road Map to READing sight words includes a short list of misbehaving sight words.

Grab your Wordy’s Road Map to READing “sight words.”

220 Dolch Sight Words Map Words

Download Sight Word Road Map Here:

Be aware of the limitations of memorizing whole words. You can only memorize a limited number of them. For some, especially children with dyslexia, memorizing words creates a harmful learning strategy that is hard to overcome. To compound the problem, we may have no idea who these children are when they are still very young. As the adage goes: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Naturally, you will want to practice reading these words over and over so that they do, in fact, become “automatic.” This will happen naturally as practice continues. It is even okay to use high frequency word cards, after teaching the word phonetically, to reinforce the goal of reading these words quickly and fluently. Of course, the best way to naturally recognize and read “sight words” fluently is to expose your children to them in print, both in books and environmental print.

Auditory perception

What is auditory or auditory perception?

The telephone rings and when you pick up the receiver you hear your mother's voice warmly asking how you are doing. We understand what they are saying to us, we recognize people by their voice and we can guess their emotional state. We do it automatically, quickly and effortlessly. However, all of this is made possible by a complex process that involves a number of brain structures specialized in auditory (sound) perception and recognition of the various subcomponents of hearing.

To perceive means to interpret information about the environment received by our senses. In fact, interpretation is an active process that depends on cognitive functions and accumulated knowledge. Auditory (auditory) perception can be defined as the ability to receive and interpret information that reaches our ears through sound frequency waves transmitted through the air or otherwise. In order for us to hear sound, a number of processes must occur:

Receiving information : at the moment of vibration of a sound source (for example, human vocal cords), waves are transmitted through the air or through other channels. When these waves reach the hearing organs, hair or ciliary cells are activated.
Information transmission : the signals that hair cells create are transmitted via various nuclei to the medial geniculate body of the thalamus.
Information processing : and finally, the auditory information received by the auditory organs is sent to the auditory cortex of the temporal lobes of the brain. In these brain structures, information is processed and sent to the rest of the brain, which allows us to respond to it in an appropriate way.

Sound characteristics and phases of auditory perception

To realize auditory perception, our brain must analyze the properties and characteristics of sound :

Intensity (strength) of sound : how quiet or loud is the sound.
Tone (pitch) of sound : depending on the frequency of vibration, high and low tones are distinguished.
Sound tone : allows us to distinguish and recognize voices, music and other sounds. Also defined as the "sound spectrum".
Duration : This is the time that the sound vibration is kept.

In addition, auditory perception is realized in different phases :

Detection : the correct process of auditory perception requires a stimulus of sufficient intensity to reach our hearing organs. In addition, this sound must be within the range of hearing. If these two conditions are met, our brain is able to locate the object that produces the vibration, even if it is moving. Thus, if someone speaks too quietly, we won't be able to hear them.
Discrimination : The ability to distinguish it from the rest of the surrounding noise is necessary to perceive and evaluate the sound. Thus, if we are at a noisy party, we probably will not be able to distinguish the words of the interlocutor.
Identification and recognition : We try to identify or label the sound that reaches our ears, such as voice, music or any other sound. This involves creating an association with that sound (eg "this is my friend's voice"). In order to correctly perceive the voice, it is necessary to define it as such, and not to be confused with external noise, moreover, it should be established that this is the voice of a friend, and not an outsider.
Comprehension : It is important to understand the sound we hear, whether it is the content of the message (when someone says something to us) or the meaning of the sound itself (the bell indicates that the lesson is over). If a friend at a party informs you that it is time for him to go, you need to capture the meaning of the message being conveyed.

Naturally, sound perception is constantly present in our daily life and helps us to adequately respond to environmental changes. It allows you to communicate freely, warns of danger and gives you the opportunity to enjoy music.

Examples of auditory perception

Both in school and in higher education, adequate auditory perception is essential for the correct assimilation of the information we receive from teachers. Poorly developed auditory comprehension, without appropriate visual support, can cause speech and material comprehension problems, resulting in poor academic performance.
During business negotiations, as well as in daily communication in the work environment, in most cases, auditory perception is used constantly. Seamless communication is the basis for working with clients. Thus, correct auditory perception is essential for successful career development.
When driving a car, hearing is essential. The horn of another car can warn us in time of danger and help avoid an accident. In addition, by the sound of the engine or the strange noise of the car, we can quickly find out if there is a malfunction.
In music, hearing is the basis of everything. When we want to perform a song in such a way that it sounds beautiful and melodic, we must check the auditory perception and pay attention to every detail, every note ... Of course, in order to listen and enjoy music, auditory perception is also necessary.
The ability to detect, distinguish, identify, recognize and understand environmental sounds helps us to act appropriately in everyday situations. This not only allows us to choose the best behaviors at home and on the street, but also to communicate with other people quickly, easily and effectively.

Pathologies and disorders associated with auditory perception problems

Auditory impairment can be caused by various problems at several levels.

An inability to perceive sounds or an impairment in this process is usually referred to as deafness . It can be caused by damage to the hearing organs, information pathways to the brain (hypoacusis and hyperacusis), or areas of the brain involved in auditory perception (cortical deafness).

However, perception is not a unitary process. There are specific injuries, such as stroke or traumatic brain injury, that can affect each of the above processes. Disorders of this type are caused by selective damage to the areas of the brain responsible for disturbed processes. Wernicke's (or sensory) aphasia is associated with an inability to understand speech (the patient with this disorder feels like contact with an unfamiliar foreign language). Conversely, auditory agnosia is the inability to recognize an object by ear and, in the case of verbal information, the person with agnosia does not recognize language as such. He may also be unable to perceive and appreciate music, this disorder is known as amusia (inability to recognize music or reproduce musical tones or rhythms). In some cases, more specific disorders are observed, such as the loss of the ability to localize sounds or imitate them.

In addition to these disorders in which loss of function occurs, there are also disorders in which patients hear sounds that do not exist. The best known of these are tinnitus or tinnitus characterized by the perception of constant whistling. In other cases, the problem is due to erroneous activation of brain activity in the auditory cortex, which provokes hallucinations. This is seen in disorders such as schizophrenia (when hallucinations may be threatening). Another type of hallucination is musical hallucinations where the patient hears music on a non-existent radio that cannot be turned off. In the case of paracusia auditory hallucinations are accompanied by hearing loss.

How to measure and test auditory perception?

Auditory perception helps us to carry out many of our daily activities. Our ability to behave in accordance with the parameters of the environment is closely related to the development of auditory perception. Thus, the assessment of auditory perception can be useful in various areas of life: in study (to know if the child needs visual support in the classroom or if their understanding problems are caused by incorrect auditory perception), for medical purposes (to find out if the patient understands the doctor's recommendations correctly and whether he can behave adequately in their usual environment), in professional area (to determine whether the employee can fully communicate with colleagues and clients or needs adaptation).

Thanks to Comprehensive Neuropsychological Testing can effectively and reliably evaluate the work of a number of cognitive functions, including auditory perception. The tests developed by CogniFit for assessing auditory perception are based on the classic NEPSY test (Korkman, Kirk and Camp, 1998), the Test of Memory Impairment Simulation (TOMM) and the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA). In addition to sound perception, the test also measures the following abilities: memory for names, reaction time and processing speed, contextual and working memory, monitoring, visual memory, visual perception and recognition.

COM-NAM Identification Test: Objects appear as an image or sound. It is necessary to determine in what format (image or sound) the object appeared the last time, or that it did not appear at all.
REST-COM Investigation Test: Images of objects appear on the screen for a short time. Then you need to choose the word that matches the presented images as quickly as possible.

How to restore or improve hearing?

All cognitive abilities, including auditory perception, can be trained to improve their performance. CogniFit gives you the ability to do it like a pro.

Brain plasticity underlies the restoration of auditory perception and other cognitive abilities. CogniFit offers a series of exercises designed to restore hearing and other cognitive functions. The brain and its neural connections are strengthened by the use of the functions in which they are involved. Thus, by constantly training auditory perception, it is possible to strengthen the neural connections involved in this process. Therefore, when the hearing organs send the received information to the brain, the corresponding neural connections are strengthened, thereby improving auditory perception.

CogniFit consists of an experienced team of professionals who specialize in the study of synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis. This has led to the creation of the Personal Cognitive Stimulation Program , which is tailored to the needs of each user. The program begins with an accurate assessment of auditory perception and other basic cognitive functions. Based on test results, CogniFit Cognitive Stimulation Program automatically offers a personalized training regimen to improve auditory awareness and other cognitive functions that are assessed as needing improvement.

To improve your listening skills, you need to practice regularly and correctly. CogniFit offers proven tools for assessing and rehabilitating this cognitive function. Proper stimulation requires 15 minutes a day, two or three times a week .

The CogniFit cognitive stimulation program is available online . A variety of interactive exercises are waiting for you in the form of exciting brain games that you can play using your computer. At the end of each session, CogniFit will show you a detailed graph showing the progress of your cognitive state.

Dyslalia | Healthy Child Medical Center

Written speech consists of two types of speech activity - writing and reading.

Dysgraphia and dyslexia - inability (or difficulty) in mastering writing and reading with intact intelligence and physical hearing. Most often, dyslexia and dysgraphia are observed in a child at the same time, but sometimes they can occur in isolation. Complete inability to read - alexia, complete inability to write - agraphia.

Writing is one of the most difficult human activities and learning to write is not as easy as it seems.

The letter begins with an idea. You need to mentally create a plan for a written statement, determine the general sequence of thoughts and constantly hold it. Each sentence that needs to be written must be divided into its constituent words, since the boundaries of each word are indicated on the letter. To correctly write a word, it is necessary to determine its sound structure, the sequence and place of each sound. In the initial stages of mastering writing, it is important to pronounce every word. Pronunciation (loud, whispered or internal) helps to clarify the nature of the sound, distinguish it from similar sounds, and determine the sequence of sounds in a word.

The next operation is to correlate the phoneme extracted from the word with a certain visual image of the letter. The letter, like the sound, has elements of instability. According to their styles, any letter can be very different: large and small, pointed, rounded, curved. The letter does not look like itself, depending on what, what color and on what surface it was written. To learn to write and read, you need a sight for letters - letter gnosis. By analogy with phonemic hearing, it would be legitimate to call letter vision graphematic. It is this vision that singles out from the letters the stable signs hidden in them, the elements that distinguish one letter from another. The analysis and comparison of letters is a difficult task for a first grader.

Then the child must reproduce with the help of hand movements the visual image of the letter. Simultaneously with the movement of the hand, kinesthetic control is carried out. As letters and words are written, kinesthetic control is reinforced by visual control, by reading what is written. At the beginning of learning to write, children focus their attention on many details that characterize the spatial orientation of movements and the graphic correctness of execution (“where to start, where to lead, where to end”). Each element at this stage is written out separately, even if the school requires you to write the entire letter or several letters together at once. The child constantly controls what he is doing and thinks about what and how to do next. It takes the same time to realize the action, to determine the strategy for the subsequent action, as to the execution of the movement itself.

The lack of formation of any operation that provides the process of writing or reading can lead to certain difficulties in learning to read and write, cause dysgraphia or dyslexia. The causes of impaired reading and writing are similar. Depending on which operation is broken, there are different forms of dyslexia and dysgraphia.

Forms of dyslexia and dysgraphia

In modern speech therapy, there are several approaches to the classification of dysgraphia and dyslexia. There is no generally accepted classification, and in practice speech therapists hold different views on the causes of defects in writing and reading and the problems of their development, most often focusing on the work of those specialists who belong to the same scientific school as they.

Phonemic dyslexia and dysgraphia
Phonemic dyslexia and dysgraphia (acoustic in traditional terminology) are the most common. It is described under different names by almost all authors. Children with this form of dysgraphia find it difficult to hear the sound composition of a word. They are poorly oriented in the sound of words, the sounds of speech are confused, merge with each other in words, and the words themselves often merge with each other. Hearing speech is poorly perceived. And for correct writing, a fine auditory differentiation of sounds is necessary, an analysis of all acoustic semantic distinguishing features of sound. Phonemic dysgraphia is manifested in writing in the substitutions of letters corresponding to phonetically close sounds. The child writes not what he is told, but what he heard. The word "brush" is written as "rosary", the words "copy" and "spears" sound and are written the same way. A common mistake is to replace vowels even in stressed position. The child understands something exactly, and something very approximately. Difficulties also arise in mastering the rules of spelling, since the child does not hear all the changes in sound during the grammatical change of words, does not make the necessary generalizations and does not feel the connection of words. Errors also occur when reading: children confuse letters, skip consonants when concatenated, rearrange syllables, read by guesswork.

Optical dyslexia and dysgraphia
Optical dyslexia and dysgraphia (visual in another terminology) is caused by the instability of visual impressions and ideas. In order to learn to read and write, it is necessary to see the letters - letter gnosis. A letter differs from any other drawing primarily in its conventionality, it is in no way connected in meaning with the sound that it denotes. In the history of mankind, letters have become so important that in the brain, in its left hemisphere, a special area has been identified that is responsible for the letter. Violation of letter gnosis, spatial representations is manifested in the difficulties of assimilation of letters, their substitutions and distortions in writing and reading. Letters similar in pattern (Z - E, R - L), letters that differ in additional elements (L - D, Z - V), letters consisting of identical, but differently located elements in space (N - P - I) are mixed and interchanged. , T – D). Children who have difficulty remembering a letter visually may flip the letter, skip it, or add an extra hook. Optical dysgraphies also include mirror flips of letters. Mirror writing is more common in left-handers, who can read, write, and copy a letter, number, or word equally likely in any direction.

Kinetic (motor) dyslexia and dysgraphia
Not all authors distinguish this form of writing impairment as an independent one. However, many people report disturbances in eye movements during reading (oculomotor dyslexia). A fixed gaze practically does not perceive an image that is complex in structure. Any complex perception is carried out with the help of active, search movements of the eye. Translation of gaze from letter to letter, from word to word, from line to line has its own patterns. Children do not always manage to master them freely. Kinetic (motor) dysgraphia is due to certain requirements for the movement of the hand, if they are not observed, there are characteristic difficulties in the movement of the hand during writing.

Dysorphography
There is also no unanimity of opinion regarding the legitimacy of classifying dysorphography as dysgraphia. This is currently the least studied category of writing disorders. It is believed that with dysorphography, the child does not have a "flair" for spelling, on the page he can make from 15 to 60 errors. The child cannot determine exactly where the well-known rule should be applied, cannot detect an error, much less correct it. In other words, "he knows the rules, but he cannot apply them." Detecting spelling and solving a spelling problem requires proficiency in morphological analysis of words, sufficient vocabulary, and the ability to select the necessary test words according to formal grammatical features. Difficulties in mastering spelling skills are noted not only in the initial period of study, but also in middle and high school. The most common are mistakes on the rules that are studied in elementary school. A special kind of dysorphography is a persistent inability to master the syntactic rules in writing, i.e. punctuation. Children with dysorphography especially need speech therapy help. Without it, they often find themselves among the underachievers in all subjects.
Secondary (non-specific) dyslexia and dysgraphia.
All these types of dysgraphia are primary, because due to a violation of one of the basic prerequisites for written speech. A distinctive feature of secondary disorders of reading and writing is the absence of specific prerequisites for them. Such children easily differentiate phonemes, orient themselves in the sound-letter analysis of a word, recognize complex visual images, they have no restrictions in movements. In the occurrence of secondary dyslexia and dysgraphia, a significant role is played by the deficit of arbitrary concentration, switching and distribution of attention. Poor auditory-speech memory makes it difficult to remember the read or dictated text and reproduce it correctly. Of particular importance is the pace of activity during writing and reading. Children who for some reason do not have time to write and read at a given pace, in a hurry to complete the task, make a wide variety of mistakes. You might think that they have all kinds of dyslexia and dysgraphia at once.