Teaching decoding strategies can be easy! Our goal is for students to feel confident in their reading decoding skills, so they can become fluent readers.
What is decoding?
Successful reading decoding is when a person uses knowledge of letter-sound relationships to accurately read a word.
When a child can decode words with confidence, their reading fluency will improve. Remember…we want students to focus on the word…not the pictures or guessing!
Why is decoding important?
According to Reading Horizons, Decoding is important because it is the foundation on which all other reading instruction builds. If students cannot decode words their reading will lack fluency, their vocabulary will be limited and their reading comprehension will suffer. Teaching higher-level reading strategies to students stuck at the word level is ineffective and frustrating.
6 Tips to Teach Decoding Strategies
Teaching decoding doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some ways teaching decoding strategies easy…
- Practice: Letter/sound knowledge
- Daily routine: Build a strong foundation in phonemic awareness each day.
- More than a pencil: Using multi-sensory techniques to practice decoding words
- Explicit phonics instruction: Going hand in hand with decoding is phonics. Explicit phonics instruction should be part of your daily classroom routine. When we show students that our phonemes (sounds) can be represented by many graphemes…it will help their reading and writing.
- Have fun: Decode real and nonsense words (see this resource to help with that!)
- Make a plan: When phonics is taught in a logical order, students will be able to find decoding success and reading will become an automatic process for them.
Practice Decoding Now!
Are you on a search for decoding practice resources? You are in luck! As a reading intervention teacher, I have created many activities for my students to work on their decoding skills. Remember…the more students work on their decoding skills, they will begin to automatically retrieve the sounds & words to read fluently…which will help their reading comprehension! That is the goal!
A few of my favorite decoding resources:
- “Decode & Read” is my newest resource to help build strong readers.
- Decoding Bundle, which includes various phonemic awareness & decoding practice pages that are editable to fit your need!
- Science of Reading Complete Guide: This guide is full of information to help students learn to read!
Science of Reading Course
This Science of Reading Course will take you on a step-by-step along the Science of Reading journey. The self-paced modules will give background knowledge of SoR, explain the key components of instruction, give real-world classroom examples, share organization tips, provide printable PDFs, and much more!
If this sounds like something that would help you with your Science of Reading journey, head HERE!
As part of the course, you will also receive the Science of Reading COMPLETE Guide!
