A remedial teacher of 25 years reported the following case study about a 4th grade learner with a severe learning disability recently placed in a Cape Town ELSEN school.
Description: The learner displayed very poor phonic awareness skills and was very negative about reading in general. She was unmotivated during reading sessions; resisted participating with the class in reading the most common words together. She displayed avoidance behaviour by not making any eye contact with the teacher, fiddling with her bag or asking to go to the toilet. She could not read any of the first most common words independently; she was unable to “break” the graphic/phoneme code and therefore could not read words and sentences. She could recognize the beginning sounds of 20% of the first 30 words. In addition to class work, she received group remedial work twice a week and the remedial teacher found her unresponsive, negative and uncooperative during the 30 minute session. These sessions had no noticeable effect on her word recognition ability.
How the Sebezaphone was used: For five weeks the learner worked alone with the teacher 3-4 times a week. She was allowed to sit in the teacher’s “special chair” doing the sessions. Together they used the Sebezaphone.
- The teacher and the learner would look at the shape of the letters (graphic form) and say the sounds into the Sebezaphone. The same was done with words and sentences. The learner repeated these after the teacher into the Sebezaphone.
- If the learner could not read a word, the teacher would read it slowly, accentuating the sounds. The learner repeated the sounds into the phone. She was encouraged to “accentuate / over-pronounce” the sounds to make sure she focused on phonetic awareness.
- The teacher asked the learner to say the beginning, middle and/or end sounds of the words. The words were chosen at random.
- The learner was praised and encouraged regularly when successful, ‘which was often’.
Impact of the Sebezaphone after five weeks of individual sessions 3-4 times a week
- The learner became positive and quite excited about using the Sebezaphone and would ask for the Sebezaphone sessions, reminding the teacher if she forgot.
- The learner could read 50% of the first 30 words independently; i.e. the learner’s ability to break the graphic/phoneme code improved.
- The learner was more motivated during group reading of the Most common words and participated.
- The learner could identify the beginning sounds of 50% of the first 30 words.
The teacher’s comments
Since the Sebezaphone amplifies the sound, it became a powerful stimulus for this learner. It was more effective than the more traditional teaching tool and methods, which did not seem to improve her attitude or ability to recognize common words. The teacher found that when she used the Sebezaphone with the whole class of 13 learners, it was an effective aid in removing distracting background noise and enhanced learners’ ability to focus on the reading task. The learners saw the phone as a “cool” device, and were therefore more willing to sound out words out loud, whereas before they avoided sounding out words or reading aloud since it was not seen as “cool” in the 4th grade.
Sebezaphone Leaflet