Stopping Sound by Sound Reading: Part 4

You've made it---the final post in the four part series of stopping sound by sound reading.  Wahoo!!

To conclude the series we will be focusing on decoding. 

BUT, before we get to that...make sure you have read part 1 (inside a reader's brain), part 2 (phonemic awareness) and part 3 (orthographic mapping).  Phonemic awareness, orthographic mapping and decoding are the three things teachers should be doing with their students to stop sound by sound reading. 

Alright...back to decoding. :) Students NEED intensive practice in basic decoding. Practice should follow direct instruction and be guided until students are ready to practice independently. It is important to start at the whole word level and then progress to phrases, sentences and decodable text. 

Guided practice should enforce and promote healthy reading habits.  Students must keep their eyes on the text and not rely on faulty reading strategies (i.e looking at pictures and guessing).

When (yes....it will happen) a student encounters a difficult word; fight the urge to immediately help.  Give the student plenty of wait time to apply any decoding skills they have learned.  If the student still struggles guide them using the following strategies:

• Spot the vowel (point to vowel, say it, blend to the end, read whole word)
• Look for "word chunks" (students look for chunks of the word they know)
• Stretch the word (point and say each grapheme, blend into whole word)
• Cover up parts of the word (cover up rime, or cover up the onset to help students visually chunk word)

These decoding strategies ensure that students are keeping their eyes on the text and cement the understanding that students MUST look at text to unlock meaning. 

Positive error correction is also a must during practice.  This is a great strategy for building student's self confidence and providing immediate and corrective feedback. Check out this video from Linda Farrell on positive error correction. She is just so adorable! :) 

That's it! I sincerely hope this series has been helpful and that you have a solid plan on how to help sound by sound readers in your class.

As always--contact me if you have any questions. :)