Reverses letters when reading

Letter reversals and letter transpositions are commonly associated with beginning readers, and students with dyslexia often continue to reverse and transpose letters within words. When students misidentify “b” as “d” or “p”, visual perception or visual memory are not the sources of the difficulty. The students may not have made a stable or fixed association between the letter name or sound and the spatial orientation of the letter. For many students, it is only through extensive practice that secure associations are formed between the visual form and its verbal label.

Multisensory procedure for introducing a letter or letter cluster:

Letter-sound relationships are introduced through discovery teaching and multisensory structured procedure.

The teacher reads five or six discovery words that contain the new letter sound.

1. Students repeat each word while looking in a mirror and listening for the sound that is the same in all of the words.
2. While looking in the mirror, students repeat the sound and discover the position of the mouth. Is it opened or is it blocked or partially blocked by the tongue, teeth, or lips?
3. While placing their fingers on their vocal cords, students repeat the sound to discover whether the sound is voiced (cord will vibrate) or unvoiced.
4. Students determine whether the new sound is a vowel or a consonant sound. Vowel sounds are open and voiced. Consonants sounds are blocked or partially blocked by the tongue, teeth, or lips. They may be voiced or unvoiced.
5. Students guess the key word for the new sound by listening to a riddle or by feeling an object obscured in a container. The key word holds the new sound in memory.
6. The teacher writes the discovery words on the board.
7. Students determine the letter that is the same in all of the words and that represents the new sound.
8. The teacher shows a card with the new letter on it.
9. Students name the letter, say the key word, and give the sound.
10. The teacher names the new letter just before writing a large model of the letter on the board.
11. The teacher names the letter and then demonstrates sky writing. The teacher describes the letter strokes while sky writing the letter.
12. Students stand and sky write, naming the letter before writing.
13. The teacher distributes papers with a large model of the new letter.
14. Students trace the model three times with the pointer finger of the writing hand and three times with a pencil. Students name the letter each time before writing.
15. Students turn the model over, and the teacher dictates the name of the letter.
16. Students repeat the letter name and write the letter.
17. The teacher shows the letter card again as students name the letter, say the key word, and produce the sound.

During the various steps in this procedure, the four properties of the letter-name, sound, shape, and fell-are being connected through the use of the auditory, visual and kinesthetic modalities. This multisensory teaching reinforces the discovery information and builds associations in memory.