Georgia PBS Interventions - Florida's Positive Behavior Support ...

ReadingOpen CourtI love the old Open Court series. It teaches the student a visual to the sounds that letters make.Here are some of the examples that I can remember off the top of my head:M is the ice cream sound. What do you say when you eat ice cream? “mmmmm” it is paired on one sidewith a picture of a girl eating ice cream and the other side just has the letter so you can fade thevisual prompt.S is the flat tire sound. How does a tire sound when it goes flat? “ssssss” it is paired with a pictureof a tire going flat just like the ice cream sound.F is the scared cat sound. What does a cat say when it’s scared? “fffff” Picture of cat with archedback etc.The nice thing is that the system is careful not to put a vowel sound with any of the initial consonantsounds because this is a mistake that many adults make when teaching consonants in isolation tostudents. My friend, Jay Turnbull, an adult with autism learned the read the names of the people heworked with by looking at the first letter of their name. I used the Open Court cards to teach him thesounds. He cued in to the thoughts behind the sounds. He would see the letter “M” and say, that’s theice cream sound and he would say “Mmmm, Michael” when he saw an “M” on an envelope.You can order information from Open Court which is now part of SRA from this website:http://www.sraonline.com/index.php/home/curriculumsolutions/reading/ocphonicskit/1318Positive Interventions and Effective Strategies Riffel -© 2005 - 83 -