Teaching Decoding Skills

Lots of advice, but I’ve been repeating myself so much I don’t want to type and post it again.

General advice is that to get better at decoding, you do decoding. Get some stuff to read and read it, and any time the kid stalls, decode, decode, decode. Don’t guess, don’t look at pictures, don’t tell him and take away from his own reading, just decode in real reading.

If he cannot do that, then back up and really teach those skills until he can. While he’s learning the skills, model the more advanced skills that he hasn’t gotten to yet to show him how it works.

For more detailed advice, look over the old posts on this board, or email me personally and I’ll copy a whole lot of stuff and send it on.

Victoria gives good advice.

I have those programs and find them to be good programs. However, until the child knows all the short vowels and can blend them in words, knows blends and consonant digraphs, the program is too advanced.

Get letter tiles from a teacher supply store or make them with the smallest size ceramic tiles used in bathrooms, for example. Then work daily with these, having the child build words, manipulate letters to make new words, change letters. This is excellent practice for a dyslexic type reader who has phonological problems.

http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba/

The “letterbox lesson” gives a step-by-step outline of what Anitya’s talking about and the “long v ersion” of what victoria’s saying ;)

Or, you could buy a copy of the book Reading Reflex and it will tell you how to teach decoding and provide you with the manipulative samples. :-)

Janis

I have used some of Pat Cunningham’s big words and making words. They are fine for “regular ed” kids but leave some holes for disordered readers. I do word building daily, however, I do it in a specific order so that I will not forget to explicitly teach patterns.

With second grade students (struggling or non-readers), I use SPIRE materials. The program uses both Lindamood-Bell and Orton-Gillingham techniques.

I am certified regular (elementary) and special education. I teach in public school and tutor privately.

I have also used Pat Cunningham’s ideas on making words. Her book has excellent patterns to copy on coverstock. I copied the consonants in white and the vowels in hot pink. They were very inexpensive to make. Making words is a start, but you have to emphasize what we call “stretch and shrink” The term comes from the program “Readwell”

I teach 1st grade and we use the “Readwell” program which has a great assessment component. The use to “Readwell” gets them to a second grade reading level . I also use a mixture of ideas from other programs that use nuemonics or acting sounds out. This really helps your lower readers because your giving them a chance to learn words using all the modalities.