Knowing When to Jump in and Help Students with Decoding

When students struggle to read a word, you don’t always want to jump in and immediately tell it to them. Give them a chance to practice their decoding strategies. Encourage them to work through the following steps:

• Sight Read It: Give them a few seconds to recall the word by sight.
• Sound It Out: If they can’t recall the word, encourage them to apply whatever phonics strategies they have (looking at first sound, looking for a word pattern, etc).
• Guess from Context: If they are unable to sound out the word, have them think about what word would make sense. That should narrow down the options considerably.
• Just Say “Blank": If they still can’t figure it out, encourage them to skip it. Students often stop as soon as they come across a word they don’t know. Encourage them to keep reading. Maybe the next word will be enough of a clue to figure out the unknown word.
• Ask for Help: If they still can’t figure it out, then they can ask for help. Come up with a signal for when they want your help (raise a finger, etc).

Always monitor your student’s frustration level. If you sense they are about to shut down, supply the word.