Science of Reading Decoding Strategies with CVC Words
Teaching CVC words and looking for decoding strategies aligned to the Science of Reading?
You have no doubt heard about The Science of Reading. It is a body of research that explores how children learn to read. It brings together lots of research from different fields like developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. It's like a treasure trove of literacy teaching knowledge!
The Science of Reading research can guide us on the most effective CVC word decoding strategies we should be using in our classroom.
Scientists have done a lot of research to figure out how reading works and how children learn to read. They have discovered that reading is not a simple visual task but a cognitive process that involves decoding written symbols, making connections to existing knowledge, and extracting meaning from text.
Learning to read starts with phonics and decoding. Your students need to be able to recognise and associate different sounds with letters and letter combinations. This process, known as phonics, forms the building blocks of reading fluency and comprehension. If you want to build a strong foundation for reading, you need to be explicitly teaching phonics and decoding.
But reading is so much more than decoding and sounding out words. It's also about understanding what we read. Learning to read is pointless without reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension relies on various cognitive processes like vocabulary knowledge, syntactic understanding, and background knowledge. Our students must understand the meaning of words, how sentences are put together, and use their background knowledge to make sense of what they are reading.
Neuroscience studies have provided us with valuable insights into what happens in the brain when we read. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans have revealed specific brain regions associated with reading. They include the visual cortex for processing written words and the language centers for semantic and syntactic analysis. Different parts of our brain work together to help us read and understand.
Knowing about the Science of Reading is so important for early childhood teachers. It helps us understand how our young kids learn to read and how we can teach reading using proven strategies that work. We need to be implementing explicit phonics instruction, developing our student’s vocabulary, and teaching effective reading comprehension strategies if we want to help our students become great readers.
And it all starts with oral language. The Science of Reading (SOR) research has found that oral language development in the preschool years is the essential foundation of reading development. As an early years teacher, you would already know that young kids with advanced oral language skills find learning to read easier, and children with listening and speaking difficulties tend to have difficulty learning to read and write.
Oral Language Development and Reading
Oral language refers to the ability to use and understand spoken language. It forms the foundation for communication, social interaction, and literacy.
During early childhood, children rapidly develop their oral language skills. They learn to listen, understand, and express themselves through spoken words. This process involves not only vocabulary growth but also the development of grammar, sentence structure, and communication strategies.
To support oral language development, it's important we create an environment that encourages rich and meaningful conversations. This is one of the main reasons I promote a play-based pedagogy. Investigation time in our classroom provides my students with opportunities to
engage in regular conversations
actively listen to others
ask questions
share their thoughts and ideas
engage in discussions
This study: An investigation into the effect of play-based instruction on the development of play skills and oral language investigated the influence of a play-based curriculum on the development of pretend play skills and oral language in children. Two groups of children were followed across the first 6 months of their first year at school. The children in the experimental group were attending a school with a play-based curriculum, and the children in the control group were attending schools following a traditional curriculum. The results showed that the children in the play-based group significantly improved on all measures, whereas the children in the traditional group did not. The results suggested that, in addition to improving play skills and narrative language ability, the play-based curriculum also had a positive influence on the acquisition of grammar.
Modeling correct grammar and sentence structure is another effective way to support your student’s oral language development. Speak clearly and use age-appropriate language when communicating with children. Encourage them to use complete sentences and help them expand their sentences by asking open-ended questions.
Expanding a child's vocabulary is yet another essential way to support your kid’s oral language development. Introduce them to new words through storytelling, books, and play-based learning experiences. Use descriptive language to explain concepts, encourage them to describe their experiences, and provide opportunities for them to use new words in context.
In addition to verbal communication, nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, also play an important role in understanding and conveying meaning. Encourage your children to observe and interpret these cues, and you will also help them to develop their social communication skills.
Finally, in your early childhood classroom, make language learning fun and interactive. Incorporate songs, rhymes, and games that promote language skills. Provide opportunities for your students to engage in play-based learning experiences that include pretend play, co-operative learning projects, and open-ended resources. Your students will benefit by using language in different contexts and roles.
Oral language development sets the stage for reading, writing, and overall communication abilities. By providing a supportive and language-rich environment, you can help children develop strong oral language skills.
The Simple View of Reading and the Big 6
The Simple View of Reading is a helpful way to understand how reading works and what skills are involved. We already know that the goal of reading is comprehension. According to the Simple View of Reading, there are two important skills that contribute to reading comprehension: word recognition and language comprehension.
Word Recognition
This involves being able to decode and recognise printed words. Decoding means understanding the sounds that letters and letter combinations make and using that knowledge to pronounce words correctly. It starts with early skills like recognising rhyming words, identifying syllables, and understanding letter-sound relationships. As children become more skilled readers, they rely less on decoding and more on recognising words automatically.
Language Comprehension
This is the ability to understand the meaning of words, sentences, and texts. It involves knowing the definitions of words and understanding how words are used in context. Language comprehension also includes understanding the overall meaning of a story or passage and making connections between different ideas.
The Simple View of Reading emphasizes that both word recognition and language comprehension are essential for reading comprehension to occur. If you have a student that struggles with either of these skills, they may also struggle with their reading comprehension.
In addition to word recognition and language comprehension, there are 6 other important factors that contribute to reading success. These include:
Phonological and phonemic awareness - the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in words.
Phonics - the knowledge of letter-sound relationships.
Reading fluency - reading accurately and smoothly.
Vocabulary - knowing the meanings of words.
Oral language - the ability to understand and use vocabulary and produce sentences.
Reading Comprehension – gaining meaning and understanding from what is read.
We have already outlined why oral language is so important for reading development. I cannot stress enough that the more exposure your students have to complex oral language in their early years, the stronger their vocabulary and comprehension abilities are going to be.
By understanding the Simple View of Reading and its different components, you can provide explicit and systematic instruction in phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension and help your students become proficient readers.
The Government of South Australia has published a guide to integrating the big 6 of reading: For beginning readers, all the components of the Big 6—oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension—need to be integrated throughout reading opportunities across the day, even though teachers may highlight these individual components at different times.
Plan activities that allow you to teach and develop these 6 essential components. Instruction needs to be explicit and incidental and should happen during whole class lessons, in groups like during literacy rotations, and in individual interactions with your students during investigative playtime.
Provide opportunities to support your student’s language development, vocabulary, and decoding skills. CVC words can help you to do this.
Science of Reading Research on CVC Words
The Science of Reading research strongly supports using CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words as a foundational element in early literacy instruction. Here are some key findings and insights from the research:
Phonemic Awareness and CVC Words
Phonemic awareness is all about identifying and manipulating individual sounds in spoken words. I have consistently found that it is absolutely necessary for reading success in my classroom.
CVC words offer an excellent platform for developing phonemic awareness skills. Children will sharpen their phonological processing abilities by segmenting and blending the individual sounds in CVC words.
If you are interested in delving deeper into phonemic awareness and phonological awareness, you will want to read this blog post: Teaching Phonological Awareness, Syllables and Phonemic Awareness
A crucial component of any good reading instruction is phonemic awareness. The best way to lay the strong foundation for literacy that we all want is to start with the building blocks of words—phonemes. These are the individual sounds that make up words. It's all about helping children understand that sounds (phonemes) correspond to letter sequences (graphemes) that represent those sounds.
In kindergarten and in grade one, we teach phonemic awareness so that our kids can independently decode unfamiliar words and become good readers. Explicit lessons in phonemic awareness and phonics give our students the skills they need to confidently tackle new words.
By the end of grade 2, our students typically need to recall between 1,000 and 7,500 words! Amazing, right? There’s no way that expecting our kids to memorise every word or every possible pattern of phonemes and graphemes is realistic. Instead, the Science of Reading research suggests we should focus on teaching foundational literacy skills in a way that equips students with the tools they need to become self-teachers. This is called the Self-Teaching model.
In this approach, students learn to navigate the reading journey independently. They develop strategies to decode words and make connections on their own, empowering them to become confident and proficient readers.
You play a crucial role in building these foundational literacy skills. By explicitly teaching phonemic awareness and phonics, you will set your students on a path to becoming self-teaching champions of reading.
Phonics Instruction and CVC Words
Phonics, the understanding of the relationship between sounds and letters, is a crucial aspect of reading development. CVC words provide an ideal starting point for phonics instruction because they are made up of simple, predictable letter-sound patterns.
Research consistently demonstrates that explicit and systematic phonics instruction, including CVC words, leads to improved reading outcomes.
Past research has shown that children who are better letter-sound readers are the better consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC) word decoders (Wolf 2014). Research has shown the faster letter-sound readers are the faster word decoders (Biemiller 1977–1978). Importantly, past research has shown children who learn letter-sound correspondences before attempting to read sight words have higher reading achievement than children who first learn to read words prior to learning letter-sound units (Tunmer et al. 1988).
From Letter-Sound Reading: Teaching Preschool Children Print-to-Sound Processing
One of the key elements in successful reading instruction identified in reading research is the role that phonics instruction plays in learning to read. The scientific consensus is that teaching phonics and all 44 phonemes systematically, explicitly, and cumulatively is key to successful reading instruction.
If you are interested in using science-based phonics instruction in your classroom, you need to incorporate 3 strategies.
Use a hands-on approach. Engage those little hands! We all know hands-on learning is the best, right? By using interactive activities, you can make phonics instruction not only more exciting but so much more effective too. Give your students opportunities to explore letters and sounds through hands-on games and activities using manipulatives.
Move from presentation to practice. It's all about practice, practice, practice! After introducing any new phonics concept, provide plenty of opportunities for your students to apply what they've learned. Encourage them to practice reading and spelling words using their newly acquired skills.
Show the direct application of phonics to reading and spelling. Help your students connect the dots! Show them how phonics directly relates to reading and spelling. Decoding plays a crucial role here. It is one of the most fundamental skills your students need to master when they are learning to read.
Reading Fluency and CVC Words
CVC word fluency plays a fundamental role in developing word recognition skills. As early readers encounter CVC words frequently, they become more familiar with common letter patterns, and they begin to quickly recognise and read these words. Automaticity in word recognition will allow your students to focus their cognitive thinking on comprehension, which will lead to improved reading fluency and understanding.
Because fluent reading involves accurate and effortless word recognition, in kindergarten, it’s all about practice! Give your students plenty of opportunities to practice, practice, and practice reading CVC words in sentences, and they will develop their reading fluency. Extra practice really is the key!
Decoding Skills and CVC Words
Decoding refers to the ability to sound out words by translating individual letter sounds into their corresponding phonemes. CVC words effectively teach decoding skills because they typically follow consistent letter-sound patterns. Explicit instruction and practice with CVC words will significantly enhance your student’s decoding abilities.
The goal is to help students develop cognitive automaticity, where they recognise words instantly without needing to sound them out. This sight word memory is called the orthographic lexicon. Your students can develop their orthographic lexicon by learning to successfully decode words.
If you want to support your student’s sight word memory (orthographic lexicon), you need to provide opportunities for them to decode words using phoneme-grapheme relationships. This process is called orthographic mapping. It's like anchoring words into their memory banks for accurate and effortless recognition.
Transferability and CVC Words
The skills students learn when they decode CVC words extend way beyond these simple word patterns. Once children master the decoding strategies associated with CVC words, they can apply these skills to more complex word structures and texts. This transferability highlights the importance of building a strong foundation with CVC words in early reading instruction.
In summary, the Science of Reading Research emphasises the significant role CVC words play in early literacy instruction. Teaching and practicing CVC words will improve your student’s phonics knowledge, decoding skills, phonemic awareness, word recognition, and reading fluency. Using CVC words in your reading lessons and activities will set the stage for reading success.
Would you like a free comprehensive list of CVC words, so you can have a curated collection right at your fingertips? No more wasting precious time searching for appropriate words for your students to practice their CVC word decoding skills on.
My list includes a wide range of CVC words for all the short vowel sounds. I’ve spent ages compiling this list. I know how valuable time is in our busy teacher lives! That's why I want to share this list with you. Just CLICK HERE to instantly download my CVC Words List.
The 5 Steps to Teach Students to Read CVC Words
So now we are familiar with the Science of Reading and the research relating to CVC words, we can create five easy steps to teach our students to read CVC words. These steps are aligned with the latest research, so we can be confident they are the best practices for teaching the Science of Reading decoding strategies.
Explicitly teach Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness
Explicitly teach Phonics so your students know the sound each letter makes and can say the sounds of each letter out loud.
Introduce CVC words and teach your students to say the sounds of each letter and blend them into a word. Encourage them to look at the letters and say the whole word.
Ensure you connect their phonemic awareness and phonics skills by teaching your students to tie each sound in the CVC word to the letter that makes it.
Build Reading Comprehension so your students read the CVC word and understand what it means.
Speaking of comprehension, the Science of Reading research says there are two more key components to effective reading instruction: vocabulary and fluency. It is suggested that reading aloud is a fantastic way to develop both!
When you read aloud to your students, you help them build their language skills and strengthen their decoding abilities. These skills will work hand in hand to boost reading comprehension.
As Emily Hanford highlighted in her research, reading comprehension results from two things: the ability to sound out words and knowing their meanings. So, in a first grade classroom, following the research, you will find
explicit phonics instruction
lessons to expand oral vocabulary
and activities to build background knowledge.
Students will be actively practicing what they've learned and becoming confident readers step by step.
What is Decoding in Reading?
Before we explore activities that will support your younger students to decode CVC words and put our five steps to teaching students to read CVC words into practice, let’s just define what decoding means.
Decoding means accurate word recognition. To decode unknown words, your child needs to know the alphabet letter sound and use the phonological awareness and phonics skills they have already mastered.
Decoding in reading requires a child to focus on the words and nothing else, so let’s see what activities I use in my classroom to support my students in decoding CVC words.
Activities to Support CVC Word Decoding
There are many activities you can offer your students to support their CVC word decoding skills. Activities that focus on alphabet knowledge (letter names and sounds) and phonological awareness are perfect for children just starting to decode.
One of my most effective activities to make sure my students are ready to start decoding CVC words is picture sorts. For example, give your students a selection of picture cards and help them to recognise which ones have the same beginning sound and identify the letter that makes that sound. This activity is perfect for individuals or small groups.
Develop your students' phonemic awareness skills with these engaging Initial Sounds Picture Sorts. Based on the Science of Reading, these phonetic picture sorts teach sound recognition and develop strong alphabet letter-sound correspondence. This hands-on phonemic awareness activity is a must-have for kindergarten and preschool teachers looking for a way for their young students to practice isolating phonemes and strengthening their alphabet letter sounds.
THIS SET CONTAINS:
26 Alphabet letter labels to make sorting mats.
up to 12 easily recognised photos for each of the 26 initial sounds.
Printable Title Cover Label for easy storage.
A word list answer key.
Bonus A4 Alphabet Poster.
2 printable Learning Prompts.
Ideas for Using Picture Sorts in the Classroom: Picture sorts are one of my favourite ways to help students hear and identify beginning sounds in words. They help students turn abstract listening into a concrete activity so they can learn by doing.
I first model how to do a picture sort with my children. Working together, we say the letter name and sound on 2 of the labelled A4 cards. I then introduce the corresponding little picture cards. One at a time, we name the picture and listen to the initial sound before deciding on which labelled card it belongs to. At the end of the guided sorting, the children are ready to sort the pictures individually or with a friend.
To become fluent readers, children must become fast and accurate with their phonemic awareness. These picture sorts will help your children get there. Put a timer on and have a sorting race—your children will love it.
Most Effective Way to Differentiate: I love these picture sorts as they allow me to easily differentiate my teaching. I can individualise the activity by giving each child the sorts for the letter sounds they need to learn.
I start them on a 2-sound sort that has a sound they already know and a sound they need to learn. For more able children, I might give them up to 4 picture sorts at once. They love the challenge.
This engaging phonemic awareness resource includes pictorial sorts for all 26 alphabet letters. Each alphabet letter sound is represented with up to 12 relatable sorting pictures. Bonus matching alphabet letter labels, clear and detailed instructions for using the cards and learning activities, and a storage label are also included.
Picture Sorts Aligned with The Science of Reading: My Initial Sound Picture Sorts align with the Science of Reading research. They develop important phonological awareness skills in your students. Use them to confidently teach foundational reading skills by integrating them into your curriculum. Rest easy knowing you’ll be providing your students with targeted instruction that meets essential literacy standards.
Singing and rhyming activities are also beneficial activities that support decoding in general. They will help your students to notice the sounds in words.
When your students know all their single-letter sounds (phonemes) and can match them to the corresponding alphabet letters (graphemes), they will be ready to start decoding CVC words.
Here are a few CVC Word decoding activities your kids might like:
Playdough CVC Words: Provide a list of CVC words for your students to make with playdough.
CVC Word Puzzles: Create CVC word puzzles by cutting apart individual letters and having students assemble them to form words.
CVC Word Bingo: Create bingo cards with CVC words and call out the words for students to find and mark.
CVC Word Sorts: Give students a set of CVC word cards and have them sort them based on the middle vowel sound.
CVC Picture-Word Match: Provide a set of picture cards and CVC word cards. Students match the pictures with the corresponding words.
CVC Word Roll and Read: Create a numbered list of 6 CVC words. Students roll the dice and read the corresponding numbered CVC word.
CVC Word Building: Give students a set of letter tiles or magnetic letters and have them use these manipulatives to build CVC words.
CVC Secret Word: Choose a secret CVC word and say the sounds separately. Students must blend the sounds to guess the word.
CVC Word Hunt: Have students go on a word hunt around the classroom or school, looking for CVC words to read and write down.
CVC Card Games: Create a set of CVC playing cards. The deck should consist of CVC Words and matching pictures. Children can play card games like Snap, Go Fish, or Memory with pairs of CVC word and picture cards. Students turn over cards to find matching word pairs.
CVC Word Race: Write several CVC words on the board. Set a timer for 30 seconds and your students can race to read as many of the words as they can.
CVC Rhyme Time: Provide students with a CVC word and ask them to substitute the first letter with different letters to build other CVC words that rhyme. You can choose to allow nonsense words for extra fun.
CVC Word Scramble: Jumble the letters of CVC words and have students unscramble them to form words. I like to have a CVC picture clue for my less able kids
CVC Word Fishing: Write CVC words on paper fish and attach a paperclip to each one. Use a toy fishing rod with a magnet to "catch" the words and read them aloud.
CVC Word Hopscotch: Create a hopscotch grid with CVC words instead of numbers. Students jump on the words and read them as they play.
You can find all of my done-for-you CVC word activities HERE.
When your students have mastered decoding CVC words, they will be ready to move on to decoding CVC word sentences. If you are interested in the ways we develop our decoding strategies by using CVC word sentences, you should check out this blog post: Decodable Sentences with CVC Words for Kindergarten. It has 9 easy ways for kindergarten students to practice reading CVC words in sentences.
Now we know exactly what decoding is and have had a brief look at some activities to support decoding in the classroom, let’s now look at the SOR reading strategies. No doubt you are wondering what are the best reading strategies you can use in your classroom that align with all this research.
How To Teach Decoding using The Science of Reading Strategies
4 Basic CVC Word Decoding Strategies
The ability to match phonemes (sounds) with graphemes (letters) and being able to segment and blend phonemes are basically the only skills your students will need to decode simple VC and CVC words. These are the phonemic awareness skills I spend most of my literacy block teaching at the start of the Prep school year.
The CVC word decoding strategies your students will start their reading journey with are:
Start with the first sound. Put your finger under the beginning of the word and say the sound or phoneme this letter stands for.
Point to the next letter (usually a short vowel) and say the sound or phoneme.
Point to the last letter and say the sound or phoneme.
Blend the 3 sounds together.
When children are new to decoding, it is suggested they focus on one letter at a time so they don’t get confused. First, ask your student to point to the beginning of the word and wait until they do that before prompting them to sound out the phoneme. If your student has trouble sounding out the phoneme, you need to go back to your phonemic awareness activities until they are confident with recognising and sounding out letters and letter combinations.
Point and Say Each Sound
It is suggested that it is better to prompt a student to “point and say each sound” rather than prompting them to “sound it out”. This explicit method of teaching has a focus on a multi-sensory approach of touching each sound or phoneme (not a letter) to accurately chunk the word. For example, the following words would be broken down like this:
dog: /d/ /o/ /g/
fish: /f/ /i/ /sh/
that: /th/ /a/ /t/
book: /b/ /oo/ /k/
wing: /w/ /i/ /ng/
Before asking your students to begin decoding CVC words, it is important that you model the above four strategies a number of times. Big book read-a-louds are the perfect opportunity for this, but you can also model decoding strategies with a CVC word written on a whiteboard too. Use the think-aloud approach to tell your students what you are thinking as you decode the word and model the strategies.
Teaching Tip: Colour code the graphemes in your words to help beginning decoders see the different sound chunks.
Then, after you have modelled these basic decoding strategies, make sure you practice them together. Remember the “I do, We do, You do” gradual release model? It works here for teaching CVC decoding strategies too! I like to do this in group rotations when I work with a small group. I can ensure all the kids are practising their decoding strategies correctly in small group instruction.
Finally, explain to your students why decoding is important and make sure to praise their efforts. Then it really comes down to practice and more practice!
Blend the Sounds Together
The final step in the CVC word decoding strategies above is to blend the 3 sounds together. Another method is continuous blending. In continuous blending, words are decoded with no stopping or pausing between each sound. For example, in sounding out the word mad, the sounds of /m/ and /a/ are blended and held for about 2 seconds, and then the sound of /d/ is said. It is called continuous blending because there is no break between the three sounds. Students slide the sounds continuously together.
Whether you use the point and say each sound method or the continuous blending method, encourage your students to put their finger on the first sound and then move from left to right as they decode the word.
Build Fluency with CVC words and Sight words
If you want to build reading fluency, your students will need to master the alphabet letters and their sounds to the point of automaticity. This can take hundreds of exposures. Just look at all the subtle differences between b, d, p, and q to understand how confusing learning the alphabetic principle would be.
Once your students have mastered basic letter-sound correspondences, they will have started to build their orthographic knowledge, and this makes decoding so much easier.
It makes learning sight words or tricky words easier too. The research suggests that sight words, and letter strings, can be learned after only a few exposures. Once your students have a degree of automaticity with single phonemes, the cognitive load they need to decode words is reduced. This makes room in their working memory to decode and comprehend more difficult words.
Orthographic mapping becomes easier for students when they can automatically match letters with their corresponding sounds. They can practice and gain automaticity by reading books and sentences that contain simple CVC words and some common sight words or high frequency words.
Word mapping or orthographic mapping is how kids move from speech to print. David Kilpatrick (2015), in his book Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties describes orthographic mapping as ‘the mental process we use to permanently store words for immediate, effortless retrieval. It is the process we use to take an unfamiliar printed word and turn it into an immediately recognisable word’.
It is important that your students are given plenty of opportunities to build their word recognition so they can store words in their permanent memory and develop reading fluency. All words become sight words once your students are reading fluently.
By sounding out the words and practising their decoding skills, your students will develop a natural instinct for reading and gain confidence in the idea that English follows logical patterns. This prepares them to tackle more complicated words with complex origins or structures.
6 Main Decoding Strategies
If you have students working with more complex words, they will need to use other, more advanced decoding strategies. There are 6 main decoding strategies you will need to teach these students.
Look at the whole word first and not just part of it.
Look for parts or chunks you might already know. For example, do you know a digraph chunk like th or a vowel digraph chunk like ea?
Start at the beginning of the word.
Point to each grapheme and say each sound or move your finger along the word, slowly stretching out the sounds in the word.
Blend the sounds together to decode and read the whole word.
Check that the word makes sense.
Once again, you don’t want to confuse your kids, so focus on one decoding strategy at a time.
It is important that your students have mastered decoding of CVC words before tackling more complicated words. Decoding a tricky word is no fun for struggling readers, so try not to succumb to the pressures of moving your kids along in their reading journey too quickly.
And just like with the CVC word decoding, it is important that you use the gradual release model to practice the above strategies many times. Big book read-a-louds and decodable texts are still the perfect resources for this. Use the think-aloud approach to tell your students what you are thinking as you decode the words and model the strategies.
Finally, don’t forget to discuss why decoding is important and make sure to praise their efforts. Then you guessed it – practice, practice, and practice again!
Teacher Tip: Old reading strategies like picture cues and asking children to skip it and read on or try a word and see if it makes sense are certainly strategies I have used in the past. You might know these strategies as beanie baby strategies. They are the ones I avoid now because I know better. Strategies like these are not considered good practice anymore. They are not reading strategies but rather guessing strategies.
You might know about the three-cueing method.
Cueing is a commonly used strategy in early reading instruction, in which teachers prompt students to draw on multiple sources of information to identify words. It’s based on the now disproven theory that reading is a series of strategic guesses, informed by context clues.
The strategy is also referred to as “three-cueing,” for the three different sources of information that teachers tell students to use: 1) meaning drawn from context or pictures, 2) syntax, and 3) visual information, meaning letters or parts of words.
Many teachers also refer to cueing as MSV, an acronym that stands for each of the three sources of information: meaning, structure/syntax, and visual.
From Education Week
The latest research suggests that the three-cueing method can teach your students to become quite good at guessing what a word might be but do little to help them learn how to decode. Some educators even argue that this system can be quite harmful to children learning to read.
We need to shift our focus from teaching the old guessing strategies to explicitly teaching decoding strategies. Decodable books will make your job so much easier. Decoding strategies can be taught with or without pictures, though. The focus is on the word and learning to decode.
Conclusion
In conclusion, understanding the Science of Reading and its implications for teaching CVC words is a great way to ensure your literacy instruction is effective. The research highlights the importance of explicit phonics instruction, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension strategies in early childhood education.
The Science of Reading research also emphasises the role of oral language development in reading success. Creating a language-rich environment through meaningful conversations, modeling correct grammar and sentence structure, expanding vocabulary, and incorporating nonverbal cues are all going to build strong oral language skills in early childhood classrooms.
We looked at The Simple View of Reading and how it provides a framework for understanding the key components of reading comprehension: word recognition and language comprehension. Additionally, we discovered The Big 6 factors for reading success and how including phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, oral language, and comprehension should be integrated into our reading program.
Using CVC words is essential in our early literacy instruction because these words promote phonemic awareness, phonics skills, reading fluency, and decoding abilities.
The research supports explicit and systematic phonics instruction, using hands-on approaches, providing ample practice opportunities, and highlighting the direct application of phonics to reading.
By focusing on CVC words and incorporating the recommended teaching strategies outlined in this blog post, your students will
develop word recognition skills.
enhance decoding abilities.
and establish a strong foundation for their future reading success.
Embracing the Science of Reading and implementing decoding strategies aligned with its principles, particularly in teaching CVC words, is essential for fostering reading proficiency and comprehension in your early learners. By utilizing evidence-based best practices, you can empower your students to become lifelong readers equipped with the necessary skills to navigate their reading journey independently.
Don’t forget to grab my FREE Comprehensive List of CVC Words so you can get a jump start on teaching CVC words and implementing those Science of Reading Decoding Strategies!
If you enjoyed this blog post on the Science of Reading Decoding Strategies with CVC Words and found it informative, other teachers might too. Please consider sharing it. Just CLICK the sharing box below.👇