Thecommunicationtrust.org.uk

Communicating Phonics Section 4 > Different types of speech, language and communication needs > Children with phonological delay/disorder Also known as speech delay or disorder General information Helping to access the phonics screening check A child with a phonological delay/disorder has Children with phonological difficulties are likely to find it very hard accessing the check because they haven't mastered the phonological difficulty producing speech.
skills required for speech development, and these are the same as those required for learning literacy. It may be appropriate for some children with significant phonological difficulties to be disapplied from the check.
• Affects the child's sound system meaning their speech is unclear and difficult to follow • Isn't primarily caused by physical disabilities If a child makes errors it will Seek information from a speech and be almost impossible to tell language therapist to understand the • Is often part of language delay/disorder/impairment but may whether these are due to them specific difficulties a child has occur as a standalone difficulty not knowing the phoneme It might be necessary to use alternative Children with phonological difficulties are likely to have associated with the grapheme, or strategies to check phoneme-grapheme difficulties with all aspects of phonological awareness including being unable to actually say the correspondence, for example: • Identifying single graphemes by discriminating between sounds, holding several sounds in signing or gesture (for example, Jolly their short-term memories and blending sounds. Both real and Phonic action, Cued Articulation sign) pseudo words will be affected.
• Compiling a list of simple words that Phonological delay is used when a child has patterns of speech are within the child's sound system to use as a screen which are more typical of a younger child. The sound system is developing normally, but at a much slower rate than expected. Children with phonological There should be no time constraint Phonological disorder will involve some delay, but also the use difficulties may need more time to on them completing the check process and produce their responses of phonological processes that are atypical, inconsistent or not following the expected pattern of phonological development. Children are likely to have They will need extra tuition in this This is likely to make the child less clear, will be more persistent difficulty with non-words and require specialist support. Communicating Phonics Section 4 > Different types of speech, language and communication needs > Children with phonological delay/disorder You should also consider the following in your literacy work with children who have a phonological delay/disorder: The outcome of the check • Can the child make a Phoneme Grapheme correspondence Some children with phonological difficulties may be able to show between the graphemes and sounds (both consonants and phonic knowledge of the speech sounds that they regularly use in vowels) that they can produce? the right way. A speech and language therapist will be able to supply details about a child's speech and phonological awareness skills. • Can the child indicate with sign or gesture (Cued Articulation Depending on the nature and degree of phonological difficulties or Jolly Phonics) when shown a grapheme, even for speech children are likely to have difficulties with: sounds they are unable to produce? • Discriminating the sounds they hear • Can the child point to the grapheme for a single spoken phoneme (similarly can they manually identify the onset for a • Holding the sounds in their working memory, so they will have simple spoken word)? difficulties being able to break up the sounds and remember them to then blend them together • Can the child recognise correct and incorrect productions of • Blending phonemes • Producing speech sound clusters (for example, ‘s' + ‘n' as in ‘snake'; ‘p' + ‘l' as in ‘plane') • Can the child match a written word to a picture when they are, given a choice of several pictures and one check word? • Higher level aspects of phonics, for example, split digraphs and dipthongs, although production of single vowels may be possible 34 Claessen et al, 2007; Sutherland and Gillon, 2007 Communicating Phonics Section 4 > Different types of speech, language and communication needs > Children with phonological delay/disorder Responding to the outcome of the check Children with phonological difficulties have underlying difficulties Children with phonological difficulties will be helped by any visual with all speech processing skills and so will need a lot of extra approaches and programmes that allow staff and child to refer to support and practice with phonological awareness skills including: sounds through gesture or sign. They will also benefit from colour coded systems as visual reminders of language structures or of ✔ Sound discrimination sound groups.
✔ Recognition of rhyme Awareness of their own speech sounds and language abilities (metaphonic and metalinguistic awareness) are also essential; ✔ Production of rhyme ensuring the child has the necessary concepts and vocabulary to ✔ Syllable segmentation discuss these.
✔ Syllable blending For children with phonological difficulties, cumulative blending is more helpful than sounding each letter out separately, because ✔ Onset and rhyme it sounds more like the target word. An example is: ‘sss', ‘i', ‘ssi', ‘ssi-t', ‘sit'. This is very important in the early stages of introducing ✔ Blending and segmenting simple single phonemes (excluding the blending of simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words.
consonant blends, for example ‘st') Children with phonological difficulties may always find a phonic approach to reading difficult. For this reason it's important to incorporate a range of different approaches including whole word reading, common spelling patterns, explicit teaching of reading and spelling rules and comprehension monitoring.
Communicating Phonics Section 4 > Different types of speech, language and communication needs > Children with phonological delay/disorder An evidence resource to inform next steps Additional resources and further support • Most children whose speech, language and communication Publications and resources: needs (SLCN) that are not resolved by 5.6 years have Dean, E., Howell, J., Hill, A., and Waters, D, (1990), Metaphon difficulties with learning to read,35 so early identification and resource pack, Slough: NFER Nelson (Minimal pair therapy, intervention is essential Maximal pair therapy, phonological therapy – also useful • Phonological awareness is a vital foundation skill in learning for introducing the language to refer to sounds and sound to read and spell 36 • Phonological awareness at 3.6 – 5.0 years is the best Black Sheep Press - publishes (as paper or CD) consonant predictor of literacy achievement 37 worksheets, pairs in pictures and phonological awareness sheets - www.blacksheeppress.co.uk/acatalog/Speech.html • Not all children with phonological difficulties will have difficulty with literacy acquisition but many will, particularly Passy, J, (2007) Cued Articulation and Cued Vowels, Ponteland: those with rhyme, alliteration and syllable segmentation STASS Publications. Booklets, DVD, Cards and wall charts on how to ‘see a sound' - www.stasspublications.co.uk/index.
php?cPath=22 • Early phonological and metaphonological intervention can help with understanding and use of speech sounds and clear Hughes, S, and Ramsay, N, Bigmouth Sound Pack, Ponteland: speech, therefore supporting literacy acquisition 39 STASS, A friendly character who shows children how to produce sounds (articulograms) - www.stasspublications.co.uk/ • Children whose speech isn't following typical patterns are most at risk of long term literacy difficulties 40 Jolly Phonics - http://jollylearning.co.uk • Care must be taken not to focus just on speech sounds. Language is also needed to support both decoding and text comprehension 41 Organisations and websites: I CAN – www.ican.org.uk Afasic – www.afasic.org.uk 35 Bishop, D.V.M. and Adams, 199036 Catts, H., 1989; Stackhouse, 200037 Hesketh, 200438 Holm et al, 200839 Bernhardt and Major, 200540 Bernhardt and Major, 200541 Denne et al, 2005 Communicating Phonics Section 4 > Different types of speech, language and communication needs > Children with phonological delay/disorder Yasmin has a phonological disorder. Her teaching staff find understanding her very difficult and she has regular speech and language therapy support. Yasmin was able to do some of the items on the phonics screen - those that contained the sounds that she is able to say. However on some items it was difficult for the adult administering the check to know if she had blended the sounds correctly or not as she cannot say all sounds the right way. What helps YasminTo help, staff used a signing system that represented sounds when they spoke, Cued Articulation. Seeing the sounds as well as hearing them helped Yasmin to remember what she had heard and gave her longer to process the information. Yasmin was also helped by a very systematic approach to learning phonics; staff needed to build in opportunities for over learning and revision and build on previous knowledge. Multi-sensory approaches and hands on manipulation of sounds using resources such as phoneme frames and wooden letters also helped her to process and read the target words.

Source: https://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/media/18907/communicating_phonics_phonological_delay.pdf