Beyond "Sounding it Out"

According to Catherine Compton-Lily, author of “Sounding Out”: A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading, the cultural model of "sounding out" "privileges phonetic decoding over other decoding strategies, particularly those that involve the meanings of texts and the structures of language" (Compton-Lily, 2005, p. 442). Knowing that there are other strategies other than "sounding out" words, it's important that teachers encourage their students to use other decoding strategies. It may be tempting to tell a student to sound out the word they are having difficulty reading, but before you say it, think of something else you could tell your student. 

Other strategies to use besides "sounding it out" include the beginning sound, ending sound, chunking a word, finding a small word, using picture clues, and asking the student does it make sense? We need these strategies because just like there's a variety of strategies, there's a variety of readers. Some students may need to focus on the beginning of the word in order to attempt it. Other students may need to break the word into chunks to be able to recognize a smaller word. These strategies are more efficient than saying "sound it out" because they focus on specific actions for the student to do when they are attempting a word that is unfamiliar. 

Now that I have been able to observe a few of the first graders reading in my field experience classroom, I have a better idea of what strategies they are using. I have not noticed "sounding out" in the conversations with the children. I do not recall hearing the lead teacher explicitly telling the students to "sound out" a word if they are having difficulty reading it. I have noticed the teacher encouraging the students to focus on the beginning of the words and also using picture clues to decide what the word is. The most important thing about "sounding out" in literacy is that teachers should not use that strategy anymore; there are many other strategies that teachers can use for their students to read words that may be difficult or unfamiliar. Using these strategies will help students become better readers.