These are the Reading Strategies we use for decoding words. Decoding means figuring out what the word says. Your children should be familiar with the strategies and pictures above.
Look at the Picture -- pictures often give us clues about important words (they can't help with words like "it" or "then") but the "tricky" words are often the big nouns we see in pictures (tree, house, horse etc).
Try the First Sound -- often a combination of the first sound and the picture will be all that's needed for early readers.
Stretch it out -- This is what we used to call sound-it-out. And if you are as old as I am it was likely the only strategy anyone ever taught you. Stretch it out doesn't work for every word, because our English-language phonics is crazy. Can you stretch out "phone?" This is just one strategy, and it shouldn't be the one we always fall back on.
Skip and Go Back -- When you come to a difficult word and the above strategies haven't helped, try skipping that word to finish the sentence. Then go back to the beginning of the sentence to see if you can get it. Often the context of the whole sentence is what is needed to make sense of the tricky word.
Make a good substitution -- Try sticking in a word that makes sense. I do this all the time when I am read a book with names I can't pronounce. Changing the name to Ron from Raphael doesn't change the meaning of the sentence.
Ask yourself "Is that how we talk?" -- sometimes we use the wrong word and it doesn't make sense grammatically. For example if a child reads "goed" instead of "goes" ask "is that how we talk?" They may need to hear you repeat back the error, but they should pick up the correct word.
Chunk -- This is finding common groups of letters/sounds. "Ing" is an example. If your child can find pieces of the word that are familiar then they can use the sounds around those to figure out the word. If I know "ump" and "ing" I can figure out "jumping."
Find little words inside big words -- This is a common strategy -- look for compound words, or little words such as "in/to," "cow/boy."
Try the other sound -- Lots of letters have more than one sound -- sometimes c sounds like s, sometimes g sounds like j. There are also long and short vowels to try.
Find the word somewhere else -- In the classroom the word wall, class dictionaries and anchor charts all have sight words to help students with reading new words. Sometimes you remember a word because you have seen it somewhere else. When you are reading at home your child may get stuck on a word on one page, but you've already helped them through that word on another page -- flip back to the first time he/she saw the word and remind them that it is the same word.
Primary students are specifically taught these decoding strategies to help them learn to read. Ask your child what strategy he/she used and why. Decoding English is tricky business -- we need to use all the strategies to help. Please don't get stuck on "sound it out."
We used to think of reading as being able to tell what words said from print. We call this decoding. That's important, of course, but it's not the only part of reading. Understanding what the text is trying to say is just as important. If I can read the words "WET-PAINT-DO-NOT-TOUCH" but I don't comprehend that this means "keep your hands off" then decoding the words is useless to me.
There are many strategies for helping children to understand what they read. And these are things we work on right from Kindergarten to Grade 6.
Background knowledge
Background knowledge changes everything you read. If you have ever read the story "The PaperBag Princess" you may understand the message to be about a little girl making her own decisions, not settling for poor treatment and not waiting for someone else to save her. You get this understanding from your background knowledge and experience. When young children read the story they haven't necessarily heard the "girl power" message in their lives so they just take from the story that the princess does not marry the prince.
The more background knowledge children have the more connections they can make to what they read and their reading experience becomes richer.
So what can you do to help?
* Before reading with or to your child look over the book cover, talk about what the book might be about. Tell you child what you think it might be about and why you think that.
* Kids love to hear their parents' stories. As you read make similar connections. If the story is about a dog you might relate it to a dog or pet that you had as a child. If the book reminds you of something else you've read or seen, then share that connection.
Susan Zimmerman and Chrsye Hutchins say that "background knowledge is like velcro. It helps new information" stick. Children (grown ups too) remember more of what they read if they can tie it to something else.
