YES! Decoding is pivotal, but getting stuck in sounding out every word is not productive or natural and can increase students' anxiety. It can also box children into books they may not be interested in. A balance is vital. Keeping it proportional will open their selection of books to topics they enjoy. Yes, I agree; Kinder students can be exposed to leveled books or passages by January-February and start learning strategies to read whole words. Then they can combine their decoding knowledge, sight word knowledge, and other fluency strategies to enjoy a vast selection of books. This will also increase their schema and vocabulary.
I see the new trend on TikTok to focus on decoding only, and I cringe because it brings back bad memories of when it was popular to JUST sight-read.
I really like your explanation here. I have been teaching long enough to see the pendulum swing and it is always scary. When I first started reading and learning and the Science of Reading, I thought, "Oh no, this could get really out of hand." I am always alarmed when I hear teachers who say students shouldn't read any books until 2nd grade when all phonics are solidified. Can you imagine how terribly sad that would be? Plus, students can be solid in phonics as early as their kindergarten year. I know my students will be handling leveled books in first grade and expected to read them, so I have to prepare them for that. I started with them in March.
This is full of great insights for encouraging our students to begin attempting whole word reading. One question - can you tell me a little more about your assessment sheet? What data do you have in the other columns? How did you assess those skills and when?
Those are the three subtests of DIBELS for kindergarten: tell me the first sound in a word, tell me all the sounds in a word, read CVC words. We have to periodically progress monitor our red and yellow kids using DIBELS. My kids are all blue and green (at least on mid-year DIBELS they were), so I don’t have to progress monitor. I do though—and I recently did the entire class on all subtests—because I want to make sure they’re familiar with the tests before the important end-of-year test. I have noticed that once kids can easily segment and blend words that it is hard for them to answer the simple question of what is the first sound you hear in this word. It really throws them off, so I practice it with them a few times before I give them their end-of-year test.
YES! Decoding is pivotal, but getting stuck in sounding out every word is not productive or natural and can increase students' anxiety. It can also box children into books they may not be interested in. A balance is vital. Keeping it proportional will open their selection of books to topics they enjoy. Yes, I agree; Kinder students can be exposed to leveled books or passages by January-February and start learning strategies to read whole words. Then they can combine their decoding knowledge, sight word knowledge, and other fluency strategies to enjoy a vast selection of books. This will also increase their schema and vocabulary.
I see the new trend on TikTok to focus on decoding only, and I cringe because it brings back bad memories of when it was popular to JUST sight-read.
Let's keep it balanced!
I really like your explanation here. I have been teaching long enough to see the pendulum swing and it is always scary. When I first started reading and learning and the Science of Reading, I thought, "Oh no, this could get really out of hand." I am always alarmed when I hear teachers who say students shouldn't read any books until 2nd grade when all phonics are solidified. Can you imagine how terribly sad that would be? Plus, students can be solid in phonics as early as their kindergarten year. I know my students will be handling leveled books in first grade and expected to read them, so I have to prepare them for that. I started with them in March.
This is full of great insights for encouraging our students to begin attempting whole word reading. One question - can you tell me a little more about your assessment sheet? What data do you have in the other columns? How did you assess those skills and when?
Those are the three subtests of DIBELS for kindergarten: tell me the first sound in a word, tell me all the sounds in a word, read CVC words. We have to periodically progress monitor our red and yellow kids using DIBELS. My kids are all blue and green (at least on mid-year DIBELS they were), so I don’t have to progress monitor. I do though—and I recently did the entire class on all subtests—because I want to make sure they’re familiar with the tests before the important end-of-year test. I have noticed that once kids can easily segment and blend words that it is hard for them to answer the simple question of what is the first sound you hear in this word. It really throws them off, so I practice it with them a few times before I give them their end-of-year test.