Decoding! How to Support Your Child at Home
Last week, I went to parent teacher conferences for my kids. While I was at the elementary school waiting to meet with one of the teachers, another parent approached me and asked for strategies on how she can help her kindergartener with decoding when they are reading together at home. So, to help, I am going to share a few strategies so that as your child is reading at home, you can support her with reading and help her decode the words on her own. It’s important to remember that there are so many strategies to help teach kids to decode. If one particular strategy is not working well for your child, don’t worry! There are others that you can try. Just like in life, some strategies work well for some people while other strategies work well for others. That’s why there are so many!
When children encounter new words, in order to decode the word, they need to have knowledge of print concepts (such as reading from left to right, realize that print is useful), phonemic awareness (understand that letters make sounds), and sound-spelling knowledge (understand the correspondences between spellings and sounds). It’s important for children to learn to decode so that they can figure out words that are new and unfamiliar on their own using the strategies that they have been taught. Here are a few strategies that you can use to support your child:
Tap-It-Out
The tap-it-out strategy is pretty popular. It is used in the Fundations Phonics Program that many schools near where I live use to support kids with phonics. For this strategy, the kids learn to tap out each sound in the word. They tap their pointer finger and their thumb together for each sound. So, for example, in the word cat there are three sounds /c/ /a/ /t/. The kids would tap their pointer finger and thumb together three times and as they tap their fingers together, they will say each sound. This strategy helps the kids identify the sounds that the letters make and try out the work on letter-sound knowledge that they are learning in school. After the kids tap-out the word, have them repeat the sentence and check to make sure the word makes sense. This can be the challenging part because often kids want to keep going, but it’s important to help them check their work.
Look at the Word!
This strategy seems pretty simple and straightforward, but it can be hard for kids to put into practice. Often when kids approach an unfamiliar word, their eyes dart everywhere but the word that they are reading. This strategy reminds the child to look at the word and remember all that he knows about letters and sounds. This can be frustrating for kids, but it teaches them to be comfortable with working through new and challenging words. If your child is struggling and needs your help decoding the word, sound it out by blending the sounds in the word together. After you decode the word, have your child do it with you. After you try it together a couple of times, have your child read the sentence again on his own. Then, ask if the word makes sense in the sentence. Again, you are helping him check and monitor for understanding of the text, while working on decoding new words.
Follow Along with Your Finger or a Bookmark
If your child is having forgetting where she is when she is reading, give her a bookmark, an index card, or have her use her finger to help keep track of the words in the sentence that she is reading. This strategy will help your child keep her eyes on the words and not lose her place when reading. As your child is reading, if she comes to an unfamiliar word, you can have her tap-it-out or look carefully at the word and put the sounds together. If your child is reading too quickly, ask her to slow down and read each word. Having your child slow down will help with comprehension as well because it is harder to know what is happening in the story if you are reading too quickly.
These are just a few strategies that you can try out at home with your child. They do not require a full lesson and are pretty easy to implement. It may just take a couple of reminders about what to do when reading and approaching unfamiliar words. Happy reading!