Don't Sound It Out

Readings:
Catching Readers Before They Fall: Ch. 4 Beyond "Sound it Out" by Johnson/Keier

This chapter brings to light what everybody working with a child on reading has experienced.  "Sound it out," you say when they stumble over a word.  "S-ch-o-o-l...sCHool!" they exclaim, proud to have figured out the letters. "Actually no," you are forced to say, popping their bubble of success, "that word doesn't follow the rules."  The thing is, there are a lot of words that don't follow the rules, and when nothing follows the rules, it is hard to use the rules.

Kids deserve better than just "sound it out" as the go to response.  This is likely to confuse and deflate them much more than it will help them.  If you are constantly telling a child to use a technique that won't work half the time, they will begin to lose confidence in themselves and their reading abilities.

This chapter delved into more ways to help kids figure out what that mystery word is.  The authors focus on three different ways to solve the problem, thinking about what makes sense, what sounds right, and what looks right.  While these are great strategies individually, they are most useful when utilized together.  If we begin to emphasize these strategies more, then we will be helping students learn truly useful strategies instead of one that works just sometimes.

By using these more realistic strategies, we will help even struggling readers boost their confidence levels.  Since there is no longer a focus on only the phonetics and letters in the word, the child is more likely to find the correct word instead of something wrong or invented.  This means less "actually no"s and more "good job"s.  Something as simple as that could make or break reading confidence in a struggling student.  The balance between self confidence and self doubt is precarious, and we need to do everything possible to tip the scales in the right direction.