Decoding Strategies

We have been talking a lot lately about different strategies we can use in Kindergarten when reading and trying to figure out a word. Below you will find an anchor chart we made together to help us remember some simple strategies.

The first thing we do is look at the picture and make a good guess. In our example it was a picture of a smiley face and we were trying to figure out the word "smile".

The next step is to look at the first letter of the word we are figuring out to see if our guess is correct. For example, if I guessed "face" from looking at the picture of a smiley face, but then see the word begins with the letter S, so it could not be "face" and I would have to make another guess now based on the picture and the initial sound.

Once we've made another guess we look at the ending sound and sometimes the middle sound, to make sure we've got a really good guess! For example, I know it starts with S so I guess "sock" but look at the entire word to hear the other sounds. "Sock" ends in a K sound, but our word "smile" ends in an L sound, so another guess is needed.

Finally, once you've settled on the word you read the entire sentence and make sure it sounds right, looks right and makes sense.

This takes a lot of practice and we continue to work very hard on these strategies!