Word Recognition

Reading is a complex problem-solving process in which readers actively pursue meaning 

- (Graves, Juel, & Graves, 2001)

     As I was reading through What Can I Say Besides "Sound it Out"? Coaching Word Recognition in Beginning Reading by Kathleen F. Clark, I found some great 'coaching' methods to incorporate into teaching. Here are a list of coaching cues that I found helpful from reading this article:

1. General Cues: Prompting readers to use their knowledge of word recognition strategies and think about how to apply them to this task

          Ex: How am I going to figure this out?, What can I do?

2. Specific Cues: Prompting specific action to provide readers with more detailed information about the word-recognition task. Focusing on: graphophonic knowledge, word-part identification strategies, and contextual supports. 

          Graphophonic Knowledge Ex: Direct them to consider individual letters and sounds- It's a hard c., The y is acting like an i., What does str- say?, Remember, ph- can make an f sound.

          Word-Part Identification Ex: Take off the (-es, -ed, -ing)., Is there a little word in here? It's a compound word; the first word is..., Is there a chunk you know?

          Contextual Supports Ex: Focus attention on inappropriateness of a word- You said waking [walking] the dog., Use pictures and words., Let's read to the end and see what makes sense.

< This sight word pounding strategy is great for recognizing words. The kids are able to participate in something fun while engaging in word recognition!

This activity I found on Pinterest belonged to a mother of two kids. She writes a set of word cards and her and her child review them daily, once he starts to read the cards fluently without hesitation they are reviewed every other day and are moved to the "even days" or "odd days" tab and new word cards are moved into the "daily" tab. Then the "even days" and "odd days" cards are moved to a day of the week tab, and then to a month tab while the other cards are moved back as well and new daily cards are added (and so on). This is a great way to help students learn words and become better readers!