Aha Moment: The Story of /th/

The Story of /th/

When I learned Souns® from Brenda Erickson for my children, I had the thought, “So many kids need this.”  By this I mean alphabetics, the most basic skills connecting reading, writing, listening and speaking.  So many children are missing this basic building block.

Elle is a fourth grade student.  Her reading skills are slipping, but she is not reading significantly below grade level.  When I did a running record with her, she read with 94% accuracy.  Her rate was slow and choppy, but her accuracy was that of an instructional fourth grade reading level according to the running record.

Next, I did the Sound Check with Elle.  What I learned taught me worlds more about what Elle needed for success in fluency than the running record would have.  After going through the single letter sounds, I found she was missing 9.  How was she reading so well knowing 17/26 sounds?  I was stunned.

The next week, I checked basic digraphs, staying true to the Souns® program.  She  knew half of them.  One of the digraphs she did not know was /th/.  When I asked her the sound these two letters together made, she said, “/t/”.  So, after doing some Souns® play with Elle (helping me in the teacher role with her sister), I asked her to read the Itty Bitty Phonics Readers, Bud in the Mud, short u.  When I did the Sound Check the week before, she didn’t remember what sound u made, so I wanted to make sure it was in place.  I am so glad I did this.  She read the /u/ words with ease, but I learned two very important things.  First, she is still using picture clues when reading.  On page five she read tub as bath because of the picture displayed on the page.  This further enforces something Brenda taught me.  When children are beginning to read, all they need are words on a page.  Pictures are a distraction and slow them down.

Then, she read the page that said, “Jump in the mud with a thud, thud, thud!”  But, what she said what “Jump in the mud with a tud, tud, tud.”  When I had asked her what the /th/ digraph said during the diagnostic assessment (the Sound Check)  she said /t/.  Another observation made while Elle read is that she clearly said and read “the” along with other sight words containing /th/ several times.  She knows HOW to say the /th/ sound.  She probably memorized “the” as a sight word.  Other /th/ sight words she'd memorized include this, with, there, this, etc.   Clearly, she knows how to say /th/.  It is in her oral vocabulary.  However, she does not know how to decode or read /th/ in an unfamiliar word.  She demonstrated this when I went and printed out a variety of words with /th/ at the beginning, middle and end of the word.  

Common sight words containing /th/ she easily read.  

More complicated words that contained /th/, she read as /t/ losing meaning to many words that she may or may not know in conversation.

Imagine how many  words containing the letters /th/ there are in the English language and how many words Elle may not be able to decode.  

Now, imagine how much comprehension slips due to this inability to decode this basic sound.

I told her mother on the way out the door to tell her thank you for me because she is teaching me so much.

This may not be a fix for all struggling readers, but it is certainly a place to start.