Problem

Buzz has learned phonics and can sound out words, but his phonetic processing is slow. His word attack skills are significantly better, but his word identification and reading fluency have not improved at the same rate.

Cause

A cause of difficulty in establishing sight words and contextual fluency is difficulty in visualizing letters in words. This is called weak symbol imagery. Symbol imagery can be defined as the ability to visualize the identity, number, and sequence of sounds and letters within words. A significant number of students (even those who have well-developed phonemic awareness) have difficulty with rapidly perceiving sounds in words, and thus are slow to self-correct their reading errors. Their spelling is often phonetically accurate, but they can't remember the visual patterns of words, orthography.

Symptoms 

Solution

The Nancibell® Seeing Stars®: Symbol Imagery for Phonemic Awareness, Sight Words and Spelling Program successfully develops symbol imagery and directly applies that sensory-cognitive function to sight word development, contextual fluency, spelling and increasing the speed and stability of phonemic awareness. The program begins by visualizing the identity, number, and sequence of letters for the sounds within words, and extends into multi-syllable and contextual reading and spelling.

This new program may be a missing link in literacy development. Developing symbol imagery directly stimulates dual-coding (the integration of imagery and language) for the reading and spelling task. Long overlooked, this important function can now be assessed and developed.