Clues for Comprehension

What Can I Say Besides "Sound It Out"? Coaching Word Recognition in Beginning Reading by Kathleen Clark asks a question that I believe is more important than I once thought when teaching children to read: what can I say besides "sound it out"? This summer, I worked at an inner-city day camp for elementary school students and had a great deal of experiencing helping these children work on their reading skills. For 40 minutes a day, each child had the opportunity to read one on one with a adult volunteer, getting the attention and help they needed to improve their reading. I spent a good portion of the summer (8 week program) working with a 6th grader who continued to struggle educationally and socially while in school. This student, Louis, was on the reading level of the average first grader, so it was very important for us to take baby steps to help him be successful. We would read very short picture books and he would have trouble recognizing the words and being able to read him. Louis would pause and I would sometimes say, "How about we try to sound this word out?" I would walk him through the process of sounding out a word. He had no trouble with this, but it seemed that he never retained this information. Louis was having difficulty recognizing the words and making connections.

After reading the article by Kathleen Clark, I have been enlightened on some great coaching skills that could be used for students like Louis. Unfortunately, I was not fully aware of the different techniques of coaching that could be used before last summer. I was very interested to learn about the two instructional cues that can be used when coaching: general cues which help guide a children to an idea or thought and focused cues which lead a student to the next step. 

In Chapter 5 of Classrooms that Work: They Can All Read and Write, Patricia M. Cunningham and Richard L. Allington explain some great activities that can help a student learn to recognize words, the similarities between words, and thus using this knowledge to spell new words. I really liked the various activities where a teacher would put a sentence on the board and would cover up one or a few words. The students then had to look at the context of the sentence and figure out what the hidden words were. 

This photo that I retrieved from Pinterest helps a teacher guide a student through reading in 3 different ways. A student can start by just looking at the pictures and talking about what the meaning of a word could be. They can use their memory and previous knowledge. Lastly, they could read the words and the letters to try and figure out the meaning. Because context is so important, I thought these ways of reading could be useful.

Questions to Ponder

1. What experiences have you had with assisting a child to read (coaching)? 

2. What instructional cues have you found are more effective (general or focused)?