Put your lips together 
and you will see, 
how to puff out a /p/ 
(Say the sound the letter makes in a word, not the letter name.)
 a soft puffy /p/ ppp, ppp, ppp

Oral Motor Awareness
  The children repeat the rap several times. The children then work with mirrors, observing how their mouths "look and feel" as they say the sound of /p/. Children learn clues to distinguish /p/ from other similar sounds (for example the sound of /b/).
 
Singing
    The child sings a song which targets the sound of /p/. The song (recorded on a CD), is accompanied by a wide variety of instruments and sung by an award-winning artist. Here is an example of the song that targets /p/.
 

Purple Pig, Purple Pig, 
What will you buy?
Peaches, and plums, And pudding and pie.
Put them in the pockets of my purple pig pants,
Have a piggy party. Do a piggy dance, 
Have a piggy party. Do a piggy dance.

Daily Exercises
    The child participates in daily drills, using the targeted sound in hands-on games and activities. (Rhyming, alliteration, segmenting and blending, are among the skills covered.) Different colors and shapes represent the sound of /p/. The sound of /p/ is combined with other sounds to form small words: pig, pet, pat, pot, put, etc.
 
Writing
    The child is introduced to the letter symbol: "the picture of the sound." The child is taught to write down the symbol, using a variety of sensory avenues: sand, flashlights, sidewalk chalk, paints, etc. The Purple Pig returns to provide a rhyme for writing the letter symbol: 
 

Purple Pig, Purple Pig What will you buy? 
A long silver knife (draw a line down) 
To cut the round pie (draw a loop to complete the letter "p.")

Movement
    The child continues to sing about Purple Pig, while participating in group movements. The child re-creates the story through gestures, mime and movement. This re-creation of story leads to the understanding of retelling in sequence, which is so important in reading comprehension.
 
Reading
    The child, having sung about Purple Pig and having come to think of the Purple Pig as a friend, is given a book about Purple Pig. (The book has pictures that the child can color. It is a book to keep and to take home!) Just as a child can find a tune on the piano "by ear" because he or she is very familiar with the melody, so a child who knows the story, who has sung it, played it, and moved to it, and investigated it phonemically and phonetically, now "senses" that he or she can read it. "Reading by ear" is the automatic decoding and encoding that results from comprehending the sounds and their corresponding written symbols. It is not simply "parroting" the alphabet. It is mastering the sounds of one's language, and then attaching those sounds to their recognized, corresponding symbols. It is reading for life!
 

"The Big Picture"

Musical, Multisensory, Bridge From Phonemics, to Phonics to Reading!!
 
    Reading by Ear is our name for learning to read by listening. Just as a child learns to talk by first hearing speech, so reading success depends on actively listening to the sounds of language. When children gain an awareness of sounds, they are ready to attach them to corresponding written symbols. When children investigate sounds by combining, separating, and manipulating them, they form the skills necessary for decoding (reading) and encoding (writing and creating) language.

    Recognizing that there are principles for other disciplines, like mathematics or science, educators have searched for principles to govern the discipline of learning to read. Our country’s recent history reflects that search: a varied, inconsistent, sometimes unstable and, occasionally, failing endeavor. The laws of phonics while helpful, still prove to be sixty-percent exception to the rule. Whole language, while offering valid support, does not address the full range of skills needed to decode and encode the written word. 

    The much-sought standard was always with us. It was as near as our own mouths! The way we say a word (for example “purple”), is the standard that remains consistent. In spite of one’s regional dialect, or maturation of vocal chords and tongue muscles, once one learns to enunciate the word “purple,” one’s individual strategy to speak that word remains unchanged. Saying the word “purple” becomes automatic. When children are taught to enunciate a particular word properly, when they become familiar with the phonemes comprising that word, they recognize the word for life. Oral-motor awareness is the standard from which to teach reading. 

(If this is true, then children who cannot hear, and as a consequence cannot enunciate properly should find it difficult to learn to read. This is precisely the case. Reading is an extremely difficult task for the hearing impaired. The more severe the hearing loss, the greater the difficulty. Reading success comes by first hearing -- by becoming familiar with the sound of each phoneme!) 

    This spring, the Congress-appointed National Reading Panel released its findings for the year 2000. Having studied a wide range of reading programs used in American schools since 1966, the panel found that the first two indicators of reading success were (1) phonemic awareness and (2) phonics. (This report can be accessed on the web: nationalreadingpanel.org.) 

    Our curriculum, “Reading By Ear,” begins with phonemics, progresses to phonics and writing and concludes with reading. Yet our process is so integrated that all four areas (phonemics, phonics, writing, and reading) are addressed each day. When children investigate their language at the phonemic level, when they connect phonemes to their corresponding written symbol, when they investigate the formation of words through drills like segmenting and blending, when they understand and and apply the rules of phonics, they can master decoding and encoding language. They will not simply parrot the sounds of the alphabet without realizing the significance of those sounds. Nor will they read by simply memorizing. (Once the capacity for word memorization is saturated, the student lacks strategies for increasing vocabulary.) 

    When a child does not have the tools for creating and recognizing new words, he or she struggles so intently to decode language, that meaning is lost, and discouragement is inevitable. The results are sadly predictable: Children decide that they are stupid , and they decide that reading is not personally rewarding. With every passing year their reading difficulties increase. When children take the language apart and put it back together, they make language serve them. When children master phonemic awareness they acquire an unconscious, automatic strategy that under girds scholastic pursuits for life.