Stuck On A Word?

Reading is tough! Give your children a helping hand with some of these strategies to support them When decoding tricky words.

We all know it's important to read to our children and to listen to them read with schools often setting rewards for regular home reading. But when you sit down with your child and they reach a tricky word what should you do?

Here are just some of the strategies that you can support your child in using to help them decode a word which has them puzzled.

As always try to keep any home learning very low pressure (they get enough pressure at school!). Keep it positive and fun. If your child at any point gets upset or anxious it's time to take a break. Let them take the lead, don't jump in to correct them or ask questions all the time, this breaks the flow of the story. If they get stuck, they will ask you for help and here's what to do when that happens.

1. REMIND THEM TO USE THEIR SOUNDS

They are almost certainly learning to read at school using one of many different phonics programmes. So a simple reminder of 'why not try sounding it out?' could be all they need. Remember though that this doesn't work for all words, so make sure you've checked first! You may need to remind them of or point out any digraphs (sounds made up of more than one letter e.g. th, ch, ee, ay etc). It can help to underline them. This can be quite daunting for parents if you aren't confident with phonics but there are plenty of other strategies you can try instead. Read on for more!

2. USE THE PICTURES

Often the pictures in children's books hold vital clues about what is happening in the story so a quick prompt to have a look at them can help them work out the tricky word.

3. SPOT ANY PATTERNS

Are there any familiar letters? What does it start with? What does it end with? Are there any words within the word (e.g forever, anybody etc)? Are there any common letter patterns?

4. USE CONTEXTUAL CLUES

This sounds more difficult than it is. It's basically using the rest of the sentence or knowledge of the character or story to help work out what the word might be. So encourage your child to read the rest of the sentence again now that they know a tricky word is coming so they can think what might fit. Get them to think about what they know from the story/characters/setting that might help them.

Often children may misread a tricky word. Don't jump on it and correct them. More often than not they will hear that it just doesn't make sense and want to correct it themselves. If they don't notice it's not the end of the world, it won't spoil the overall story.

5. JUST TELL THEM

Children are often quite determined to work things out for themselves with little interference from us as possible. So let them take the lead as much as possible. Having said that, there will be some words that they just can't figure out using the strategies above. If they want to know what the word says...just tell them! This is particularly true for words they may not have come across before, technical language or words with very peculiar spellings.

FINALLY

Remember that the purpose of reading is for enjoyment! Don't let reading become a battle. It's better to read it to them than to force them to struggle over every word.

Do you have any strategies that you use when helping your child with their reading? Share in the comments below.

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