Well, let’s face it. I’m a slow learner. It takes me at least 10 times of doing it the hard way before I decide I have to surrender and do it the best way. Now we’ve showed this graphic before, but we know as educators how important it is for us to repeat and review the material that we teach, as well as go into more details about how to use this information. Today we are going to be talking about the “Decoding” portion of the reading formula.
As you may recall, the reading formula has two main parts comprehension and decoding. These two pieces together are how kids read in a way that is meaningful. We have to have BOTH parts. Comprehension is pretty self explanatory, you have to understand what you have read, but decoding is more of what we tend to think of when we think about “learning to read”. If you need a refresher on the comprehension piece, go back to literacy part 2 blog!
Decoding is how we recognize each letter, remember the sound that the letter represents, and then combine the sounds into a group that forms a word. This is something we take for granted, especially as adult readers, but for kids this is a complex and explicitly taught set of tasks.
In order to decode (or sound out words), your child will need the following skills:
Let’s break this up and take the next three weeks to really dig deeper into each of theses three skills needed to decode! I know I know, you were hoping I would give you the magic formula right away, but don’t worry. I promise this is worth the wait and the read. See you next time!
– Kasey –