I think this may be to make it more interesting and tactile for the children to help them learn the shapes of letters.

Like with the sand paper letters, they can trace the shape

or i have done it with my daughter by tracing a letter on her back to see if she could recognise it, then she does it to me.

She really enjoys it (and she is better at it! )

Well, I suppose it might be slightly helpful if they were blind or partially sighted, but since when did anybody read by feeling the shape of the letters? Or write their work on their backs?

If Lily works in a secondary 'special' school, where children have profound & multiple difficulties, this sort of activity with letters 'might' have a purpose, but for teaching common or garden secondary 'specials' its usefulness is about zero.

Cildren need to be able to identify letters visually, and associate them with the sound they represent, for reading, and to be able to write the correct letter/ letters, in response to sounds, for spelling.

So, what sort of 'specials' are you working with, Lily?

how rude i'm sure lilly knows her job.
Have you never heard of multi sensory teaching ? this is a useful teaching method for all children not just children with special needs.

Thanks for your response Kerryl. I've used a wide variety of teaching methods over the past 15 years. I am an HLTA and fully aware of how children learn.

we were advised to use salt/sand trays and the Fernauld tracing technique for our pupils by the Borough SpLD teacher, and that was in secondary too

I've used this method as well. As far as I'm concerned you use what every you can to help the children. If this works then use it.

I have large black letters on A4 paper -laminated to last. I use a fluorescent pink for the consonants and fluorescent yellow for the five vowels and Y.

Depending on which stage I am working on I generally use the letter sets from the JP scheme and use this as a visual activity for blending words. I give each child in the group a letter card, then sometimes sound out the word f/r/o/g/ where the children have to work out the word and assemble themselves in the correct order, other times I say the word in full /frog/ and this time they have two tasks, listening and blending. [ these are infants]

I find the children work well together if one gets in the wrong position.

Once they are confident with this I might use two sets of cards with two children at a time [in the hall where they lay the cards on the floor] and this quickens them up to see who makes the word first.

When we get onto long vowels the two vowels hold hands within the word, and when doing a magic e word the two with the vowels touch sholders to reinforce they are working together.

It's a good opportunity to reinforce the rules of the vowels such as [when two vowels go walking....... and what the role of magic /cross over e/ is.

I usually spend the first term doing this untill they no longer need the big cards to visualise, then we might use magnetic letters or small cards.

Oh, dear,

I've used that method too! It was completely useless.

Can nobody explain exactly HOW it teaches children to read, bearing in mind the fact that they have to be able to recognise letters, and respond with their sounds, when they SEE them.

I know it is in Hickey and Beat Dyslexia, but that doesn't make it a useful exercise. Those programmes were written in response to the whole language. 'look and say' methods of teaching reading which caused most of the 'dyslexia' in the first place. Wiith their predominant emphasis on phonics, they were a spark of light in the darkness, but they are painfully slow at remediating children and contain much that confuses them still. There are better, more effective programmes around now.

I don't really think it would be of any help to you Maize for us to explain the benifits of our work practises as you appear to be very set in your ways and not particularly open to different ideas.

We all know that what works for one child might not for the next, and we need to keep an opne mind and be prepared to change and adapt our teachings for each child we work with.

Erm i don't think (and i may be wrong) it is supposed to teach them to read or spell

But to teach them to write and as i said before correct letter formation - the 'shape' of the letters

But this is Secondary children we're talking about, not children just beginning to learn to read and write.

I've never yet encountered a secondary child who doesn't know the shapes of the letters! Many of them have acquired dreadful handwriting, either because they weren't taught very thoroughly at primary, or because it disguises the fact that they can't spell, but they all know 'their letters'. In fact, it was their palpable boredom, intense irritation and obvious feeling of being insulted (by the assumption that they didn't know the letters) at having to go through the 'feeling letters' performance that started me questioning the value of the exercise. That, and the fact that they didn't progress at all despite all the different methods that were being used with them.

I'm not at all set in my ways, I just like to know that what I am doing moves children on, quickly. If I were set in my ways I'd still be forcing them to feel letters in a bag. I'm prepared to question and research and to challenge 'perceived wisdom' if necessary. I don't accept that any child with all its faculties is unable to learn to read to a real functional level. By the time they get to secondary they are so far behind their peers that you have to move very fast to get them anywhere near the level they are capable of. Pure phonics is the fastest, most effective method I've found yet. If the research evidence showed that standing on my head chanting mantras at them taught them to read quickly, then I'd do it like a shot (but fortunately, it doesn't!).

If this thread was about learning to recognise letter shapes, then putting 'phonics' in the title was very misleading. Phonics is about the sounds which comprise words and how they are represented by a letter, or letters. Children don't learn that by touch, they learn it by sight (grapheme recognition) and sound (word segmentation).

ever get the feeling

Well said lily