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Context & Decoding Strategies

Tags

ELA: Reading MS/HS/College Strategy

Skills

Verbal Reasoning Verbal Memory

Context & Decoding Strategies

If your middle or high school student often skips challenging words when reading

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Students will use specific decoding strategies and context clues when they encounter an unfamiliar word in reading.
  2. Direct Instruction: Provide struggling readers with a list of strategies to learn and practice when they encounter unknown words in reading. Introduce the strategy list (see next slide) and practice together dissecting words in steps during small group read alouds. For students who are having consistent difficulty decoding in middle and high school, teachers and parents should discuss whether the student would benefit from working with a reading specialist.

*students* How To Tackle An Unknown Word

  1. Think of the context of the sentence. What is it about and can you fill in the blank with a word that makes sense? Then back up and try the tricky word again.
  2. Take the prefix and/or the suffix off. You might recognize the base word when it stands alone.
  3. Mark up the word, breaking the letters into groups. Look at the beginning and ending letter. Then look for familiar parts of the word to read, such as "-ight" or "-ade" and read these parts out loud. Add on the beginning or ending letters and try to string it together.
  4. Try different vowel sounds out loud. Recognize which sounds right.
  5. Don't be afraid to experiment with the word out loud. Hearing it can help you figure out what sounds right much more quickly.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

All readers will benefit from having discrete strategies to decode unfamiliar words while they read. Otherwise students will often simply skip the word which can lead to gaps in understanding. As students get practice with these different approaches, they will be able to efficiently and automatically use them as needed.