How People Learn to Read
When I was learning to read, I learned very quickly that when I got stuck on a word, my teacher (or the person reading with me) would ask me to "sound it out." I was a pretty good reader, so this was pretty easy, but sounding it out can be a really tricky thing to do! Think about the word "said." There is really no good way to sound out that word. The sounds just don't match.
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Let's think about ourselves as adult readers. What do you do when you are reading and you come to a word you haven't seen before? You probably don't sound the word out letter by letter. Perhaps you chunk the word up into parts. Or, maybe you substitute something that would make sense. And you surely don't read the whole book sounding out several words on the page. You probably have most of the words memorized and your brain recognizes them right away as you read.
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There are lots of ways that students can learn to read, and I challenge you to say more that "sound it out." You might point out the parts that can be chunked up in the word, or ask "What makes sense?" or take a close look at what is happening in the picture. You might even just tell them the word and praise them they remember it the next time because their brain is starting to learn to recognize it. Have fun with it! Reading will get easier and easier to your tutee, the more they learn to love it!
Some of the different ways students figure out an unknown word