SensAble Literacy Camp 1

Objective of SensAble Literacy Camp:  Uncover and identify sound holes. Fill in these holes to improve reading fluency and comprehension.

What are Sound Holes?  Sound holes are missing phonemes and/or digraphs needed to decode.

Sound Hole Anecdotes:

Student in fourth grade easily reads instant words containing the digraph /th/ memorized by sight: this, the, they, with, etc.  This student did not recognize /th/ sound in a Sound Check.  She then read, “Thud, thud, thud” as “Tud, tud, tud,” changing the entire meaning of the reading passage.  At the fourth grade level, she is now beginning to slip in her reading.

Student in fourth grade called “e” /ee/ when doing a Sound Check.  He goes on to read the word “stem” as “steam.”  

SensAble Literacy Camp 

Three students attended the first camp. One child was entering fourth grade and the others were entering fifth grade.  Two attended private schools. One attended a public school.  All three were beginning to slip in reading according to grade-level expectations.

To begin the camp, two assessments were administered per student: a Running Record and a Sound Check using Souns®. The Running Record is a record of a piece of text equivalent to a 4th/5th grade reading level.  A percentage of accuracy is calculated along with the words read per minute and it also notes the total number of self corrections.  The Sound Check is a diagnostic assessment that guides intervention.  Simply put, does this child know all of his/her letter sounds and six basic digraphs?

The holes uncovered during the Sound Check, illustrated by the Running Record and daily anecdotal notes, identify the missing foundational elements of the Alphabetic Principle.  The camp’s design was to fill these holes using a variety of games and fun activities like the engaging Souns® Mat.  Next, sound-specific reading passages were used to ensure the gaps were filled.

One mother wrote about the camp, “My daughter recently had the chance to work with Della at one of her literacy camps.  My daughter has an audio processing disorder, and I wondered how 5 days could possibly help her – but, the program is different from anything else we have tried.  Della mostly worked with the kids with letter sounds – yes, I know, I thought she learned this in K and 1st grade, right? Well, to my surprise, my daughter only had mastered 16 of the 26 letter sounds.  Now, along with some other things, I understand why when sounding out her words when reading, she just made words up.  Not because she was lazy, but because she did not know certain letter sounds.  By the end of camp, she has learned how to slow down and focus on the sounds she struggles with.  With this, hopefully she will retain more of what she reads.”

The results speak for themselves.

If these results could be achieved in two hours of playful instruction every day for a week, imagine what can be accomplished over the course of a school year!