Sounding out words sucks!

All too often we tell children to "sound it out" when they come across an unknown word. Pretend you only know the sounds of each letter and you are learning to read. Sound out the word "Star". A child would sound out "s-t-a-r"= "stare" because for them "a" has two sounds short and longs. But in reality in words like "star" the "ar" is one sound not two. So adults would say "s-t-ar" but not children!!!!

The more effective way to help them work out unknown words would be to expose them to "chunks" of words. In the example above, "st" is a blend and "ar" is a chunk. "A+r" makes the pirate noise "arrrrr", "o+r" says "or" which is why if you look at the sounds you hear in "For" you would say "f-or" not "f-o-r".

So its my new goal to not tell children to sound out a word but rather look at the structure of the word and to look for parts they already know!

-Miss Hansen