Hello,

can you tell me the difference between the matching method and flash-card reading?

Thank you!

Sorry I can't answer that...
but just wanted to comment on how beautiful your daughter is...
love the pic
Dawn

Flash-card reading would fall under "sight reading," used the sight words that can't be sounded out phonetically (i.e., the, of, etc.) It's basically just "practice until it sticks." It's simply focusing on the visual memorization of the word.

The Matching Method is this: let's say you're working on 5 new words. You would write those five words on flashcards, making two sets for each word. Take the first word, for example, "the." Show the child one card that says "the" and say, "This says 'the.' Talk about it, the letters, what it looks like, etc. Then, lay the other set of cards out (all 5), and say, "Can you find the card that says "the"? The child has his/her one card to use as a "reference." He/she can look at his reference card to try and find the "matching" card in the set of 5. After he/she finds the match ("the"), again discuss what the word is, how he/she recognized/identified it, etc. The child has then "matched" the word, and the thinking behind it is, that as the child matches words, he/she is working his way through processing what the word looks like and doesn't look like, so again, he/she is practicing using visual discrimination.

In my first-grade classroom, when I taught reading, I would start with the matching method when introducing new sight words, and then, after the kids have seen the words and their letters, and we'd talked about them, THEN we'd go on to basic flash-card reading (sight recognition).

That's how I was taught those two terms and their differences. I wouldn't doubt, however, that there are others out there who were taught something different (for the meanings of the two terms), as that's the way the educational pendulum always seems to swing! (Nothing ever lasts too long in education!)

I hope this helps!

http://www.kootenay.com/~ryckman/DownHomeLearning5.html

Just found this article. It might be helpful...maybe?
It talks about teaching kids with DS to read...and if I was reading it correctly, I think it "sort of" addressed your question!

Donna - your children are gorgeous too!!

On the subject of teaching reading, when did anyone start teaching their child to read? Ben's quite good at matching pictures and I'm going to start introducing word cards for him to match. If anyone has had success teaching their pre-schooler to recognise words, I'd be interested to hear of your experiences.

RachelG

Henry sight reads about a dozen words. A couple of times a week I pull out his magna doodle and write down words and/or draw simple pictures and write the letters/numbers ect for Henry to identify.

I also read to him and he likes repetition. In some books the every other page is the same short phrase. For example, Jump Frog Jump. I read the long passages, and Henry reads Jump Frog Jump on every other page.

I think Ben and Henry are close in age. Henry turns 4 in August.

Barbara

Bryan and I also create scrap books and look for a certain subject e.g cars in mags, old books etc, I cut them out and he sticks them into his scrap books. We have scrap books on transport, Our Garden, animals, shopping and food, times of the day e,g breakfast and we have just begun a nursery one. Bryan loves it and tells me what subject he wants, it seems to help him and he loves to show his books to everyone who visits. At speech therapy he's learning the match method its really useful and can work with the scrapbooks he's created 'say Bryan see's a picture he likes of a cat I'll cut it out and he finds not only the book but the page also'. We both love this game, Michaela his little sister is getting involved also and Bryan really likes explaining in his adorable way what the pictures are Goodluck and your daughter is lovely.Oh PS
Just keep an eye out though Bryan picked up a mag in the newsagents and tore a page out with a bike on, before I had noticed, soooo I had to buy it, little rascal.

all those games of matching, recognizing stop signs, etc are the earliest steps to reading. Try to remember to teach a bit of both, sight words and phonics. I would suggest the leap frog word whammer if you dont already have it. It is like fridge magnets that spell out 3 letter words. We used a lot of Clifford cd's for the computer, they have some VERY good word family programs.

http://www.famlit.org/studydog/register.cfm is a GREAT program. If you click that you are financially unable to pay, they will let you dl free.

http://www.quiz-tree.com/Sight-Words_main.html?s=SightWordsBuddy uses Dolch sight words for practice online go to the bottom of the page and download the sight word buddy.

Signs that your child are ready to start reading are: they talk about words, try to guess what a word is, they match things easily...(for instance Ciarra was matching her movie cases to the movies, which have nothing but the title on them, I knew she was reading the titles, THAT was a cool day), they show an interest in following along with a finger while pretend reading, they know repetitive phrases in stories, they express interest in hearing words for fun or rhyming.

Sometimes it helps to make a word with visual cues when you first start out. For instance LOOK could have eyeballs in the O's. Visual cues are big for our kids. I believe that kind of writing using picture cues is called rombus?

Ciarra is reading well into the 2nd grade level, and she is just going in to 2nd grade. She uses a combination of sight words and phonics, which we all do. She is very excited about reading.

This summer, we will start a program called Fast ForWord, a scientific based reading and speech program. It is VERY expensive, but we feel so worthwhile. Her work on the program will be documented by a researcher, as we are part of a study this summer. I am REALLY excited to get going on it.

ohhh....thanks for all of the good ideas!

I have another question tonight:

Cecilie acquires vocabulary for active speech easily via early reading- no matter if we use the flash card method or matching method.

In July we started reading first sentences like "I want XYZ", which could either be a verb or a noun. She started to repeat these sentences to us, creating sentences after her own mind. Now, as she started kindergarten she needs a lot of new vocabulary. What I am not able to do is make her advance in speaking in sentences AND learn new words for every day. What do you think is more important for the general development of speech? Any advice?

We started teaching Gianna to read when she was 2 1/2 but she although she picked up the words easily enough she really didn't like doing it and so we stopped and just started again about 2 months ago. (Now 3 1/2) Gianna now has 25 words that she can sight read. We used the method outlined in the Woodbine book "Teaching reading to children with DS" and we also play memory games with matching sets of cards. We have concentrated on words that Gianna would find immediately useful to combine into sentences such as "more" "drink" lunch" "juice" "please" "mum". Within 2 days of showing Gianna that she could combine and read "lunch please mum" and similar combinations she started using these spontaneously in speech. We also introduce new vocabulary that she isn't currently using spontaneously in her everyday language and this too transfers over.

Gianna and Cecilie are about the same age. We did matching games since Cecilie was about 2 years old. During our Christmas holidays we started, not just matching, but asking, what was written ob the card. She now reads about 70-100 words. This summer we started reading short sentences with correct syntax. Like I want milk please/too. There is XYZ. She repeats these sentences like that. Sometimes it´s still hard for her to use these sentences, but it works, either just like that or by supporting her with signs.

What I would now like to introduce is "I can" and "I have to"

Long words are a lot easier for her to pronounce, when she has red them before for a couple of days.

I started around Feb 05 using the glenn doman method on reading to my son (flash cards). I think it worked well and my son had built up his vocabulary. And I moved on to teach him mathematics to prepare him for mainstream education. The best part of this program was when my son's phonics teacher told me that he can read better than most of his classmates who are normal. (1 thing to add is special needs children in my country don't usually go to a mainstream school. If the parent do not take any actions, the children will stay in special school till the age of 18.)

To Ciarra's Mom -- Thanks for the way-cool links!

To Alex's Mom -- Just love the sig file!