Welcome to Lesson 4 of our Hebrew Literacy course! In this session, we’ll dive deeper into the challenges of phonological processing and symbol imagery processing, and explore strategies to help children overcome their learning differences. We’ll examine the unique aspects of the Hebrew language, including body-coda blending, and discover how this approach can make reading easier and more enjoyable for our students. Join me as we uncover the alignment between science and Torah, and gain practical tools to support our children’s literacy journey.
Watch this mini lecture!
Symbol Imagery Processing
Let’s focus on children with symbol imagery processing challenges. Despite potentially excelling in art or copying symbols accurately, they struggle specifically with working with symbols. Similarly, children with phonological processing challenges may excel in music or debate, but face difficulties with the component sounds of words.
One effective strategy for symbol imagery processing is using embedded pictures. For example, many children confuse the similar-looking letters “dalet” and “reish”. By pairing these abstract symbols with concrete visuals and stories, children can connect with the material on a visual, intellectual, and emotional level, making learning more engaging and effective.
By using embedded pictures, children will focus on the subtle differences between letters and develop a memory aid to enhance discrimination. For instance, let’s take the letters ‘dalet’ and ‘reish’. We can create a story to distinguish them:
- ‘Dalet’ is a poor man (‘dal’) who is bending down, feeling ashamed, with his hands behind him, begging for charity (‘tzedakah’).
- ‘Reish’ is a head, making it impossible to mix up with the ‘dalet’ who has his hands behind him.
This visual association helps children remember the distinct features of each letter, making it easier to tell them apart.
The Three Parts of Phonological Processing
Let’s dive deeper into phonological processing, which consists of three key components:
- Awareness: Recognizing the individual sounds within words.
- Rate: Quickly interpreting written symbols into speech sounds or articulating ideas.
- Memory: Accurately recalling and repeating sequences of speech sounds, such as unfamiliar names or longer words.
For example, consider a person’s ability to hear and repeat a new name in a foreign language. The average adult can remember around seven units of speech sounds, but some individuals may struggle with this, only able to recall three units at a time. This challenge can make reading sentences or words with multiple syllables difficult, as they may forget the initial sounds by the time they reach the end.
Even if a child knows their letters and syllables, they may still struggle with phonological processing. For instance, when reading the word “shemesh”, they may recognize the individual sounds (segol shin = “sheh”, segol mem = “meh”, and shin = “sh” at the end), but struggle to retrieve them and combine them smoothly and quickly, resulting in a slow and labored pronunciation (“she – me – sh”).”
When children struggle with phonological processing rate, reading becomes a laborious task. If they sound out words slowly, it’s hard for them to blend the sounds into a cohesive word, making it difficult to even hear what they’ve read. Moreover, reading longer sentences becomes an exhausting and tedious process.
For children with rate challenges or differences, learning to read can be an overwhelming and demotivating experience. The struggle to quickly and smoothly process sounds can make reading feel like a heavy burden, leading to frustration and boredom.
As we progress through the learning journey, it’s essential to continually support children in continuing to develope their phonological processing skills. This includes:
- Increasing their rate: enabling them to process sounds and read more fluently
- Enhancing their memory: building their capacity to recall and repeat longer sequences of speech sounds
- Expanding their awareness: helping them recognize and manipulate more complex individual sounds within words
By addressing these areas at every level of learning, we can empower children to become more confident, proficient, and enthusiastic readers.
The Phonological Awareness Umbrella
Let’s explore the phonological awareness umbrella, a helpful analogy for understanding the skills that fall under this category. The umbrella works from left to right, representing the progression from larger to smaller sound units.
As children develop phonological awareness, they become able to work with increasingly smaller sounds. The progression goes like this:
- Word awareness: recognizing individual words in a sentence
- Syllable awareness: identifying syllables within words (e.g., “ba-na-na”)
- Onset and rhyme awareness: recognizing initial sounds and rhyming patterns (e.g., “c-at” or “man” and “fan”)
- Rhyme and alliteration awareness: identifying words with similar sounds (e.g., “man,” “fan,” and “tan”) and words starting with the same sound (e.g., “buh” in “bowl,” “beer,” and “basket”)
- Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, segment, and blend, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) within words. For example identifying that cat has three sounds /k/, /a/, and /t/ and blending three sounds /m/, /o/, and /p/ to from a word.
Children often develop these skills through exposure to nursery rhymes, songs, and music that incorporate rhyme and alliteration. However, some children may need explicit instruction to master these skills. As literacy educators, it’s essential to provide all children with both explicit instruction and opportunities to implicitly develop phonological awareness skills.
Hebrew requires less phonemic awareness than English because children can blend larger sound units, such as bodies and codas, which are more distinct and easier to manipulate than individual phonemes, making reading development more accessible.
Hebrew versus English Word Blending
Let’s compare reading Hebrew and English words. In English, words like ‘cat’ are typically divided into onset and rhyme (‘c-at’) or phonemes (‘c-a-t’). When teaching children to read English, we often focus on phoneme blending, to emphasize the relationship between letters and sounds. Onset- rime blending is slightly easier than phoneme blending, however, it does not provide the benefit of clearly emphasizing this relationship between sounds and symbols.
In contrast, Hebrew words are divided into ‘body’ and ‘coda’. The ‘body’ consists of the first letter and vowel of a word, while the ‘coda’ is the final phoneme or sound. For example:
- In the word ‘av’ (אָב), meaning “father”, the body is ‘a’ and the coda is ‘v’.
- In the word ‘dag’ (דָּג), meaning “fish”, the body is ‘da’ and the coda is ‘g’.
- In the word ‘har’ (הַר), meaning “mountain”, the body is ‘ha’ and the coda is ‘r’.
Research shows that body-coda blending is the easiest approach to teaching reading, and it’s particularly well-suited for Hebrew. This method aligns with the natural phonological structure of the Hebrew language, making it a practical and effective way to teach children to read. Interestingly, this approach can also be applied to English reading instruction. Here, we see a beautiful alignment between scientific research and the Torah’s guidance on teaching children to read in a way that’s both easy and effective.
Phonological Awareness in Hebrew Reading
Let’s explore a simple Hebrew reader and analyze how a child would use body-coda blending in conjunction with other phonological processes. In the example ‘dag’, the word is broken down into its body (‘dah’) and coda (‘g’).
On the second page, we have the sentence ‘dag ba’ (דָּג בָּא). Notice that ‘dag’ (דָּג) has a body (‘dah’) and a coda (‘g’), making it a closed syllable. In contrast, ‘ba’ (בָּא) has a body (‘bah’) with no coda, forming an open syllable where the alef is silent.
To read this sentence, children need to:
- Decode each word by interpreting print into sounds and syllables
- Read the words together smoothly
- Understand the meaning
To achieve this, they require:
- Phonological awareness to blend sounds into words
- Phonological memory to recall the first word while reading the second word
- Phonological processing speed to read fluently
- Effortless retrieval of word meanings to focus on the author’s message
To build these skills, we must develop phonological awareness, memory, and rate step by step. This will enable children to become proficient readers who can appreciate the purpose of reading: to learn, be informed, persuaded, or entertained.
In conclusion, we’ve explored the challenges some children face and potential solutions. There’s still much to discover, and it’s natural to feel overwhelmed. But remember, that’s what Hebrew Scouts is for – to provide you with the tools and support you need to help your students succeed. Let’s dive into our resources and materials, and continue learning and growing together, one day at a time.
