Decoding is the ability to look at a word and read it by utilizing phonemic awareness skills or to put it more simply, the ability to sound out a word. Being able to store words in your memory for recall later is the main goal of decoding.
To decode a word, you need to be able to identify letters and their sounds and to know how to blend those sounds together to form a word.
The following activities can help grow visual memory and blending of words
Matching Game
Create your own matching game by making two sets of matching flash cards with similar words on them (for example, dad, bad, fad, mad, etc). Have your child match words together. This is helpful in promoting visual discrimination and memory recall, especially with words like bad and dad, featuring letters that are often confused.
Blending Slide
Using a picture of a slide, put letters on the slide and have your child sound them out as you “go down” the slide. Click here for an example
This can be adjusted to whatever appeals to your child. You could use a picture of a building, planets, ladder, and then use another object to move across that for each letter (for example, if using planets, the astronaut can fly from planet to planet or letter to letter). The goal is to have the child sound out the letters and eventually blend all the sounds together until they say the word.
Bingo
Adapt a Bingo game by using letters and/or words in the grids. You say a letter sound or sound out a word slowly and allow your child to find the word on the bingo sheet. You can find printable sheets on Teachables or make your own.
Read decodable books
Decodable books are ones that utilize simple words and sentences and focus on specific sounds, like certain vowel sounds, to help new readers practice and learn.
For more early literacy information, check out KCPL’s Early Literacy page and check out other blog posts about literacy
Happy reading!
Written by Lisa Clark, Youth Collection Librarian
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