The Letter A

A young student struggling to read frequently stopped and remained silent until I told him what the word said.

It might have been a really easy word like ’car’. This continued for some time as I tried in vain to work out the problem.

I tried overlays and magnifiers. He had prescribed tinted lenses for Mears Irlen syndrome and, while this helped, the same problem kept arising.

In ‘banana’, – he said, ‘I don’t know how to say that,’ finally admitting he could not read it.

I realised he had not long finished a series of what I call ‘Biff and Chip’ books in which the letter ‘a’ is printed as the written form ‘a’.  When I told him ‘a’ made the same sound as ‘a’, he said ‘Oh, I didn’t know that!’.

I think he is always going to be a slow reader but what a difference to his confidence!