Learning with Leila

09/12/2024

Bookings are no longer available.

08/02/2024

New bookings are currently unavailable.

29/05/2022

Here’s a quick game children can play to practise reading /ch/ words spelt using ‘ch’ or ‘tch’.

In particular, it is important children recognise ‘tch’ as ’one team’ (grapheme/group of letters representing one sound). Children who have yet to master this may attempt to read words like “fetch” as “f-e-t…fet + ch…fet-ch.” Whereas we teach them to read it as “f-e-tch…fetch.” It has 3 sounds (using 5 letters).

Random wheel - Spin the wheel to see which item comes up next.

19/05/2022

John Walker, co-creator of the Sounds Write program, has a free course on Udemy for parents wishing to learn how to support their children’s reading and spelling journey at home.

Although he mentions the course was designed to support children aged 4-6, the same principles can be applied in the intervention setting with older students.

Watch the videos to gain insight into the activities and strategies used in the Sounds Write program.

John Walker is a Udemy instructor with educational courses available for enrollment. Check out the latest courses taught by John Walker

25/04/2022

14/03/2022

After school sessions now available on Mondays: 3pm, 4.30pm and 5.15pm.

09/03/2022

Many of my clients have been working on the ch spellings (ch/tch). They are all doing a fantastic job 🌟. Here’s an online game activity for extra practice 😊

Group sort - Drag and drop each item into its correct group.

01/02/2022

A warm welcome to all those continuing or beginning their learning journey with me this month ☀️

19/11/2021

Summer School Jan 2022 - currently taking expressions of interest for Sounds Write tuition during the school holidays. Sessions will be held in January 2022 at Success. PM or email [email protected] to reserve a place for your child.

10/10/2021

Sounds Write is a phonics program. Phonics means teaching children to link sounds to letters to help them spell. Children are taught to identify the sounds they can hear and match them to the correct grapheme. Graphemes are sets of letters (in groups of 1, 2, 3 or 4 in English) representing ONE sound. Eg b, sh, tch, ough. The word “though” has 2 sounds (th-ough) and is spelt using 6 letters.

Here’s a link to a great video by Alison Perry, who was my Sounds Write trainer.

22/09/2021

In this blog post, phonemes (speech sounds) are explained by way of analogy. When learning to spell, children must be able to recognise all the sounds that make up a word. They must segment a word into its sound parts. Eg spell = s-p-e-l (4 sounds, spelt with 5 letters). Once they can do this confidently, they are then able to learn the different ways to spell the same sound. Eg /s/ spelt city, fence, scent, listen, miss.

“Getting children to say words slowly, listen to the sounds, and feel what’s happening in their mouths while writing/reading the relevant spellings is the teaching equivalent of bringing speech sounds up close enough to lick them in the face. It makes them hard to miss.” (Alison Clarke, Spelfabet)

Some of my best-received blog posts have included analogies to (try to) explain complex ideas. So let’s try another one. A phoneme is like a dog. We start developing a concept of what a dog i…