Sounding Out

When a child is reading and comes to an unknown word, the natural instinct of many people (myself included) is to tell the child to "sound it out." Thinking about the English language, this can actually be very difficult. There are so many words that are not spelled the way that they are pronounced (i.e. knowledge). There are words that are spelled differently with different meanings but are pronounced the same (i.e. deer and dear). There are words that are spelled the same way but pronounced differently (i.e. read). With all of the weird things going on in the English language, telling children to sound out a word just doesn't cut it. They are extremely likely to mispronounce words, use the wrong form, or replace it with another word.

As I was administering a word check with a first grade student, I noticed that when I pointed to a word he was unfamiliar with, he instantly began to sound it out. I assume this is how he has been told to figure out words from previous experiences. While sounding out can work for a lot of words, children need to be aware of other strategies that they can use to figure out unknown words.

As a future teacher, I have gained some knowledge about strategies that can be used when reading with children. If an adult encourages these strategies, children are likely to start using them on their own when they are reading independently. When reading with a child and they replace a word with another word, it is important to ask the child questions like "Did that look right?" or "Did that make sense?" These questions encourage the child to focus on the word and its context. If the child skips the word because they do not know it, you can guide the child by telling them to look at the picture, continue reading the sentence then going back, or look at the word parts. Using the picture can give the child hints about what is going on in the story so that they could make some guesses about the word. From those guesses, they could look at the word to see which word makes sense and looks right. This is also useful if you have the child read the rest of the sentence. The child can then make their guesses and fill in the blank. These are just a few strategies that can be used but they are all extremely beneficial when reading with a child.