Decoding and Vocabulary: What's the Big deal?

Reading and Literacy in the Middle Level grades is a delicate situation for students who struggle as readers.  They have a sense of wanting to succeed, but at the same time probably don’t want to ask for help or be embarrassed by receiving extra help.  Therefore, any additional instruction offered needs to be given extra thought.

When ELA teachers are needing to teach decoding and vocabulary in their classrooms, a few things should be taken into consideration.  First, decoding is much more than being able to “sound out” words.  It is the ability to understand and comprehend what the text is about as well as the phonemes and phonics of reading.  From the readings done in this class, I feel that the best way to learn decoding is by offering support to nudge the reader to begin to read independently.  Teachers should guide students to figuring out words and be asking what exactly the text is about as an assessment to see how much the student is understanding.  Teachers should ask guiding questions while reading, such as, “Can you figure this word out?” “Prepare your mouth to say the word.”  The suggestion to “prepare your mouth” is from the text When Kid’s Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers.  She says that this will help students to take an active part and start to put together the sounds of the word as an active participant instead of just staring blankly at the page. 

After the foundational skills of phonics are in place, if students are still having problems with decoding, the teacher must teach students how to find and use the context of the reading.  This must be done with careful consideration of individual student’s abilities to recognize when the author is giving the definition, a synonym, or even an antonym within a sentence or two.  If students do not know how to do this, the teacher should help students to be able to find context clues.  Also, if there are pictures included on the page, a teacher can ask if the word makes sense in comparison to the picture.  Students should eventually learn to make sense of what the whole meaning is by learning to look at what is on the page.

One part of learning what is on the page is to look at the vocabulary on the page.  Knowing what words mean is one part of decoding that should not be separated from it.  However, vocabulary instruction should not be a passive product of having students look up definitions to words, memorizing them, and then having a test on them at the end of the week.  When vocabulary is being introduced, students should define the words in a way that makes sense to them and put the definition in their own words.  After this, the teacher should find an active way to use the word, such as using the word every day in class.  Also, there should be no more than 10 words on the list, 5-8 words has been said in When Kid’s Can’t Read to be an ideal number.  Any more words than that and students are overwhelmed and cannot learn the terms in a way that is conducive to long term learning and remembering of the words.

Overall, I think the general message of learning to read and understand reading is that it should be an active process by both the student and the teacher.  Both should see that if additional instruction is needed that it is not a bad thing, and that the student should not be embarrassed or ashamed of needing extra help.  One concern that I still have is, what is the best way to pull aside students for extra help when you have 25-35 other students who are watching your every move?  Where would the best place be to give additional support?  When and how often should additional instruction be given?