Mastering 'v' and 'y' with Reese and Linda Farrell

Linda Farrell: What's that letter?

Reese: 'Y'

Linda Farrell: This is 'y', that's a 'v'.

Reese: /v/

Linda Farrell: (She points to the different letters that are typed on a piece of paper). Can you say 'v'? Okay. Look down at the letter and say 'v', point to it and say 'v'.

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: What's that letter?

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: Point to it and say 'v'.

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: And that's that letter?

Reese: 'Z'

Linda Farrell: Okay.

Reese: They kind of ... so when you put it this way, it kind of looks like an 'n.'

Linda Farrell: It does kind of look like an 'n'. Yeah. It was very interesting working with Reese because he pointed out to me, very articulately, how 'v' and 'z' looks like an 'n' and 'v' and 'y' and they all ... it was exactly the letters that he was getting confused about and he could even tell us as a kindergartner why they were confusing. Okay, here we go. [Ms. Farrell shows Reese a card with a 'v' on it.]

Reese: 'Y'

Linda Farrell: You're telling me that's a 'y', and I'm going to tell you that's a 'v'.

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: So can you say 'v'?

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: What's at the bottom of the 'v'? A point? What's at the bottom of the 'v'?

Reese: Point ...

Linda Farrell: Okay ...

Reese: It's kind of, if you turn it this way and there's a line, it kind of looks like it would look like an 'a'.

Linda Farrell: It would!

Reese: It looks like a triangle and you put it this way in the hands.

Linda Farrell: Okay, but what letter is that? Is it ... ?

Reese: 'Y'

Linda Farrell: Okay, this ... is this 'a' or 'v'?

Reese: 'Y'

Linda Farrell: 'Y'? Oh, my gosh! I have to show you something. 'Y' looks like this. Okay. When I first started working with Reese, I was just trying to get him to know 'v' because my assessment had told me 'v' was confusing. I don't work on all of the confusing letters. I work on one or two confusing letters at a time. I work on one letter if he just can't remember the name, and when I first started working with Reese, I thought that he could not remember the name of 'v'. So, I get a stack of index cards. Maybe I get 12, maybe I get 14, maybe I get eight. Half of those will be the letter that we're working on. One letter. The other half will be letters that he's very confident with, so he doesn't have to think about those, so that I go, what's the name of this letter? What's the name of this letter? As I did that, it was real easy for him to say, 'v', 'v', 'v'. Let's do 'v'.

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: What's the name of that letter?

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: What's at the bottom of the 'v'?

Reese: Point ...

Linda Farrell: You got it. Say 'v'.

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: Okay, what's that letter? [She points to several letters.]

Reese: 'S', 'v', 'e', 'v', 'c', 'b', 't', 'b', 'x'

Linda Farrell: Let's try these one more time. You think you can go through 'em again?

Reese: There's a lot of 'v's. [Linda laughs.]

Narrator: Once Ms. Ferrell saw that Reese knew the name of the letter 'v', then she worked on helping Reese discriminate between the letters 'v' and 'y'.

Linda Farrell: My job is to figure out a way to make them not confusing. For him, they all looked like they were the same shape, so I have to think, okay ... As I was working with him, I saw that he confused 'v' and 'y'. He'd already told me, oh, they both have these and they look, this has a point here and a point here. So my job is to get him to look at the letter and give him a way to verbalize the difference between the shapes of the letters. And I had never done this before with 'v' and 'y', but I looked and I said, well, 'v' has a point at the bottom and 'y' doesn't have a point at the bottom. This goes through my mind. 'Y' doesn't have a point at the bottom ... what's at the bottom is a line. Okay, so I'll make that difference. This is a 'v' ...

Reese: And 'y'

Linda Farrell: You got it. Now, there's a line at the bottom of 'y'. What's at the bottom of 'y'?

Reese: Line ...

Linda Farrell: A line. What's at the bottom of 'v'?

Reese: Point ...

Linda Farrell: Okay, say 'v' has a point.

Reese: 'V' has a point.

Linda Farrell: 'V'

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: Say 'y' has a line.

Reese: 'Y' has a line.

Linda Farrell: 'Y'

Reese: 'Y'

Linda Farrell: Okay. Now point to the point and say 'v' has a point. 'V'.

Reese: 'V' has a point. 'V'.

Linda Farrell: Say, 'y' has a line.

Reese: 'Y' has a line. Line.

Linda Farrell: Say 'y' has a line. 'Y'.

Reese: 'Y' has a line. 'Y'.

Linda Farrell: Got to point to the line.

Reese: 'Y' has a line. 'Y'. 'V' has a point. 'V'.

Linda Farrell: Okay. Now we're going to ... every time I show you a letter, you have to say that and then you have to say it. Okay? You ready? Okay, here we go.

Reese: 'V' has a point. 'V'. 'V' has a point. 'V'. 'V has a point. 'V'. 'Y' has a line. 'Y'. 'Y' 'has a line. 'Y'. 'Y' has a line. 'Y' has a line. 'Y'.

Linda Farrell: Okay, now I want you to try saying them without saying 'v' has a point, 'v'. Just say the name of the letter, go slow. Okay?

Reese: Okay. I might feel quicker and quicker. 'Y'.

Linda Farrell: Okay. Now you have to look down and point and tell me.

Reese: 'Y'

Linda Farrell: What does 'y' have?

Reese: A line.

Linda Farrell: A line. What does 'v' ...

Reese: 'V'

Linda Farrell: It is! [Linda and Reese laugh.] I started in this lesson by just getting him to know 'v', but that wasn't going to work. He still wanted to call it a 'y' sometimes, so I needed to set up the contrast. And you saw that it worked as long as he said 'v' has a point, 'y' has a line, 'v' has a point, 'v' ... 'y' has a line, 'y'. I stopped the scaffolding too quickly because I went back and he looked at it and he just saw two lines and he went, 'y,' We need to get ... whenever we do a scaffold where we're comparing two letters that look similar and we are saying this one has a point at the bottom, this one has a line. He has to do that enough where it is automatic for him to say it and know that letter and he has to look at it ... because what we want him to do is, subliminally, when he stops saying it, being, looking at that and thinking it, and then eventually he doesn't have to go through the thinking 'v' has a point, it just automatically becomes 'v'. Two high fives!

Reese: I missed one ...

Linda Farrell: Let's do another one then! Once he got good at 'y' and 'v', just those two contrasting, then I would put three 'y's, three 'v's and six letters that he already knows so that he would have to think. We're making it just incrementally more difficult for him to have to remember until he just automatically looks at that litter and it's a 'v' and that one's a 'y', and it does happen. Sometimes it happens with practice 25 times. Sometimes it happens with practice 250 times, and sometimes it's 1,000 times, but it will happen. Two high fives. That was really, really good.