Pamela Brookes - Before the Squiggle Code (A Roadmap to Reading)

DOG ON A LOG

Pup Books

Book 1

I am not a Reading Specialist or certified educator, but I do have a lot of experience teaching my daughter with dyslexia how to read. At times, it was difficult to determine what to do and how to do it. It is my hope that the information provided within this book will make the journey a bit easier for other parents. The content provided herein is for informational purposes and does not take the place of an evaluation and teaching plan provided by a credentialed educator. Every effort has been made to ensure that the content provided here is accurate and helpful for my readers. However, this is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject. No liability is assumed for losses or damages due to the information provided. You should consult a credentialed educator for specific guidance on educating your child, yourself, or others.

DOG ON A LOG Books

an imprint of

Jojoba Press

Tucson, Arizona

Copyright 2019 By Pamela Brookes

All Rights Reserved.

For information, contact the publisher at

read@dogonalogbooks.com

Public Domain images from www.clker.com

Library of Congress Control Number:2019905858

www.dogonalogbooks.com

BEFORE THE

SQUIGGLE CODE

(A ROADMAP TO READING)

DOG ON A LOG Pup Books

Book 1

By Pamela Brookes

Edited by Nancy Mather Ph.D.

Table of Contents

Introduction

DOG ON A LOG Books are written for anyone learning to read with phonics. They start with basic skills then slowly add more and more reading concepts. Typical learners may advance fairly quickly through the steps. Individuals with reading disabilities such as dyslexia may need additional learning strategies and a lot more repetition. However, DOG ON A LOG Books are written following a systematic Orton-Gillingham based phonics sequence and are perfect for individuals with dyslexia when they have the right guidance. (They are what my daughter with dyslexia reads.)

When I first started reading about teaching phonics, I often felt overwhelmed. The things I read usually had a lot of theory that needed deciphering and lots of the activities seemed more complicated than I wanted to tackle. I wrote DOG ON A LOG Pup Books to try and eliminate some of those feelings for other parents. These books will guide you along the path of teaching reading. Once you understand the skills that your child needs to learn, you can then add additional activities that you and your child find fun and useful.

In this book, I give an overview of the earliest steps of learning to read in a single section called The Squiggle Code. Then I give very simple activities you can do with your child to practice those steps. You can also download printable activities from www.dogonalogbooks.com to supplement the activities in Pup Books.

The second Pup Book is called The Squiggle Code (Letters Make Words.) It is where the reader starts to learn the sounds of the letters and how to combine them into words. After that book is completed, the student is ready for DOG ON A LOG Lets GO! Books or DOG ON A LOG Chapter Books. Those companion series will slowly introduce new phonics rules and give lots of chances to practice reading. (The Lets GO! Books and Chapter Books tell the same stories. The Lets GO! Books have a lot less text so can be less intimidating for new readers. They work as a bridge to the longer Chapter Books. You could say, Janelle, you read the Lets GO! Book. The Chapter Book has the same type of words and you know the story. I am sure you can read it if we take our time.)

As a parent, I know how expensive it is to raise kids. To limit the production costs of the Pup Books, I limit the activities I include. Not every family will want the same extra activities. Some kids may like worksheets where they have to match rhyming pictures. Other kids might hate them. Those kids may prefer making up silly words that rhyme with pictures they see or a gazillion other fun activities. You can find online ideas for activities at www.dogonalogbooks.com, www.TeachersPayTeachers.com, or www.Pinterest.com. (Hint: Phonological Awareness refers to our ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words. Phonemic Awareness means hearing the individual sounds, called phonemes, that we give to letters.) You can also watch videos on teaching phonological awareness at www.coxcampus.org .

However, if your child is struggling and does not progress from one step to the next even though you think they are old enough to understand the material, it could be that they have a learning disability such as dyslexia. If that is the case, I recommend seeking help from a certified learning disabilities professional.

I have developed DOG ON A LOG Books and materials with recommendations from my daughters reading teacher and other professionals who specialize in phonics and learning disabilities. However, coming up with strategies that can help individual learners is beyond what DOG ON A LOG Books are meant to do. I provide the road map and reading materials and the people that know your children can develop the methods for using the materials. The Orton-Gillingham Approach is considered the best method for teaching children with dyslexia (and possibly most learners.) I highly recommend finding a certified Orton-Gillingham instructor.

You can learn more about dyslexia in my e-booklet Teaching a Struggling Reader: One Moms Experience with Dyslexia. There is information about testing, inexpensive screening tools, and how to find the right type of specialist and how to find the information you need to help your child yourself. You can read it at www.dogonalogbooks.com/free. Excerpts from two sections are included at the end of this book.

Spoken language is a code. The code starts with random sounds that we group together into words. Then we put several words together to make sentences. By talking and by listening to each others words and sentences, we share ideas with other human beings.

Reading and writing are another type of code for sharing ideas. This code involves squiggles. We happen to call those squiggles letters.

We put squiggles on a piece of paper and tell a child, Tell me what this says.

Yet those squiggles are silent. They do not make any noise. Surely children must think we are crazy that we can get sounds out of squiggles.

Children trust us so they try to make that madness happen. If they are lucky, they have patient adults that show them how the squiggles make sounds and that groups of squiggles combine to make words.

Part of the best way to help someone learn to read is to make sure they can hear the smallest sounds in words which are called phonemes. And before we can teach them the small sounds, we must make sure they can hear the big sounds.

So, the beginning of learning to read is making sure the student can hear words. That may seem silly since most people learn to talk when they are just babies. Yet if they havent thought about what a word is, how can we expect them to turn squiggles into words?

This book will help your child, or even an adult learner, learn to hear each word in a sentence. Once they can do that, they must learn to hear syllables in each word. (Identifying syllables will also be an important skill when they are trying to read. Once they are taught the six types of syllables, it will make reading and writing a lot easier.) After they can identify the syllables in a word, it will be time to hear the individual sounds, the phonemes, in a word.