This week I had a nice report and I had to write and tell you this because I know it is not my wonderful therapy skills, but my little picture cards I have been using -your Phonic Faces. They are just terrific with kids.
Two months ago, I was assigned a new walk-in student who is 3 years old. He came walking in the first day with his little back pack and Speech Folder from his other SLP. I don't give a lot of paper work so I just looked it over thinking I was inadequate compared to that SLP. I told mom to keep working with those papers as they were still appropriate (practicing his one sound with various vowels & finger tracing the graphic of his sound, etc.). I put him in with another child who is in kindergarten here but not talking much. I have used the Phonic Faces cards and books for all my sessions and MorphoPhonic Faces to generate words. The kids LOVE the Phonic Faces.
Well, the grandmother showed up and ran up to me in the office. I didn't know what was going on with her. She said she didn't know anything about this other SLP, but he had worked on one sound with her for months and since he has been with me the child is talking so well, saying all kinds of sounds he could not say before, knows the sound of most of his letters, and they are just amazed with his progress! The kindergarten teacher says the same thing about him. He is starting to use sentences, can say all the short vowels before she even has introduced them to the class, and he is learning his alphabet. The grandmother also told the kindergarten teacher where the walk-in child's brother is enrolled. She has been spreading it all over school. It amuses me because I don't think SLPs are appreciated here. Most teacher's don't even know what we do. I am convinced these boys have done so well because they connect with these cards/materials. The kids love them and the story books. When I read the stories, they go in a trance and remember the stories almost like I read them. They want me to read them again and again because they like to participate in the story pages. I just love your materials and you for all the things you do for kids.
Kitty Hoffman, MA, CCC-SLP
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Improvement in One Session!
Phonic Faces has changed my therapeutic intervention for both speech and language. Now my articulation students can visualize how to make the sound appropriately and improvement has been observed in one session! Blends are easier to obtain by sliding the sounds together using Phonic Faces.
Language students frequently have difficulty understanding phonics rules. PHONIC FACES allows me to work on spelling skills and increase language production through writing. My students are able to recall and visualize the spelling rules within one to two sessions when using Phonic Faces.
Debra Storz
Speech-Language Pathologist
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Apraxia, LLD, and more!
I am using Phonic Faces with a variety of patients who present various communication disorders. Apraxic pre-schoolers enjoy the alphabet storybooks with their
colorful pictures, repetitive story patterns while targeted specific oral positions in order to produce specific phonemes in words. Primary aged children who present with language based learning disabilities also enjoy the
pattern stories, and have been able to orally produce the targeted phoneme when presented with the Phonic Face card. Auditory discrimination activities with these visual cues have also been integrated into the therapy session. Phonic Faces is a fabulous addition to therapy materials.
Mara H. Lane, CCC-SPP
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"I am a speech-language pathologist who has been using the phonic faces cards for over a year. I find them just perfect for teaching articulation skills. They really help my clients visualize sound production. They are also perfect for phonemic awareness. The kids really enjoy making thier own book and coloring the faces. We brainstorm words that have the targeted sound in them and write them right on the page. I have recently discovered the MorphoPhonic faces. Wow! I used to use an old set of Folkes Sentence Builder cards but these are SO much better for building expressive syntax skills. I have my eye on the spuzzle cards next, they look great. This company really understands what speech pathologists need!"
Emily S. MA CCC-SLP
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Phonic Faces Compliment Other Programs!
I’m using Phonic Faces in conjunction with some of the techniques I’ve used with the LiPS (Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing) program in both my speech/language classroom and in the 5 Kindergarten classrooms I collaboratively teach in each week. I have 12 kindergarteners on my caseload this year and wanted to introduce the kindergarten teachers to teaching techniques and language that more closely links speech sound production knowledge (which most of the Kindergarteners have) with letter name and sound knowledge (THE major achievement in the kindergarten curriculum.) I’ve used the LiPS program for several years and I like the “discovery” process the program uses and the way it develops a set of words that describe what my student’s mouths are doing when they produce speech sounds. I was looking for something that did a better job of linking the visual LETTER with the sound and was very excited to hear about Phonic Faces! Phonic face letter cards help cue information about the name of the letter and how to say the letter’s sound in a manner that my students are able to remember and use. The storybooks extend the information presented and allow additional practice with visually recognized the letter, naming the letter, and producing the letter sound contributing to a stronger ability to recall the letter and sound. My student’s enjoy meeting the Phonic Faces characters. In our district, our Kindergarten curriculum is based on the Land of the Letter People.
In the lessons the kindergarten teachers and I teach collaboratively each week, our Phonic Face characters are the Land of the Letter People’s special friends. We’re just covering our first vowel sound (a) and the teacher’s are very interested in the concept of baby sounds and grown-up sounds. It’s so much more concrete and in keeping with our student’s life experiences than the long/short methodology. My kindergarten teachers are seeing the benefit of teaching letter names and sounds using specific vocabulary to describe the manner and place of production. I’m hoping to enhance my speech/language student’s success within their classroom as well as increase phonological awareness and speech articulation skills. Thank you for providing such an inspired teaching tool!
Sherri Hole
Speech-Language Pathologist
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Keep the Visuals Coming!
I wanted to let you know I have really enjoyed having your materials to use with my speech/language students. They are wonderful! Materials like those found in your book, “Learn to Punctuate Visually”, and the “Phonic Faces” books have really worked well with my language students who learn so visually!
I have used the “Phonics Faces” cards and books with students who have phonological difficulties as well as students who struggle with sound-letter associations in their reading and writing. They are so adaptable to a variety of uses. The students remember the vowel sounds much better with them presented as ‘adult’ and ‘baby’ vowels in a creative story format. Language concepts presented in the stories are wonderful to help work on phonological skills alongside other language skills.
I have a cute example of how well the books work. I have a third grade student who came into my program with very limited language due to cognitive deficits (and has a little bit of a stubborn streak at times). Among other things, I had been trying for a whole quarter to work on syntax skills such as using the ‘I’ pronoun rather than ‘me’. Some days she would work well and other days she stubbornly refused to say anything but ‘ME’ (spoken loudly and a little sassy) no matter how much coaxing was tried. We had gotten to the story book of “Icky Carrots” when she suddenly realized that the ‘adult’ always said ‘I’ in her sentences. From that point on, we have had no problems!
I have used the “Learn to Punctuate Visually” materials with many of my students with language difficulties who just cannot seem to put their ideas in writing and also struggle with knowing how to construct a sentence or where a sentence starts and stops. I love the concept of visualizing sentences in picture sentences and then framing the word sentence to go with the picture sentence. The kids pick up on the concept immediately. This year I have extended the idea of framing picture and word sentences to a story map that I created for students to use when writing about stories or events.
Thanks so much for your excellent materials! Keep them coming! I look forward to every new item you add.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Hickman-Kamarad
Speech/Language Pathologist
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Pre-K, K, ESL and More!
My school district (north of Dallas) recently purchased 8 sets of Phonic Faces and we are having great results with our students! Your work first attracted my attention in 1993 with the publication of Whole Language Intervention (Singular Publishing), and your articles which followed have always been on my must-read list. After reading a piece by Jan Norris in Topics in Language Disorders on applying the SDS framework to early literacy and phonemic awareness, I was convinced that this approach was exactly what we needed in our reading program.
The Pre-K and K teachers here are especially pleased that Phonic Faces is enabling our at-risk population to succeed. We have an especially high number of ESL students, and have seen an improvement in their performance already. Our end-of-year testing data for all at-risk students will be compared with previous years, and I feel confident that we will show a significant improvement.
Please email any outcome data that might be helpful in future presentations that I will be making to my district for placing the program in additional classrooms (we are a rapidly growing district). Thanks very much, and I will keep you updated on our success with Phonic Faces.
Sincerely,
Bill Blaine
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I bought your program for my 7 year old niece who was struggling in first grade. We have been using the program for 9 weeks following her last parent-teacher conference. The teacher said Katy was very bright and wanted to learn, but was at the bottom of her class in reading. We are all amazed at how fast the program has worked. In just 9 weeks Katy has progressed from the bottom of the class to the top. Her teacher said she will be on the Honor Roll this nine weeks. Thank you so much. Things are really looking up!
Mary Cox
Baton Rouge, LA
