Additional Activities

Word Building

This exercise is designed to help the student ‘see’ words inside of words and therefore make the decoding process easier. The student decodes the word on the left-hand side. Draw the student’s attention to the fact that the same word (written in bold font) is located inside the next two words to the right. Consequently, the student should immediately be able to say that part of the word without ‘resounding’. Then it is just a matter of adding on the accompanying prefix, suffix or letter(s).

The student should complete two rows each day. Alternatively, this exercise can be completed with a teacher at the following lesson.

Chunking Decoding Strategy

The ability to quickly and accurately syllabify words is an important component of reading mastery. The chunking exercises in this program use a simplified method of breaking multisyllabic words into manageable chunks, thereby reducing the load on working memory. It is easily learned and can be effectively applied to the decoding of unknown words. The system is not 100% perfect due to the complexity of English, but it provides a close enough representation that the student is easily able to decipher the correct pronunciation if the word is in his/her oral vocabulary. Note: This strategy is for working out words students don’t know and then ‘tweaking’ to pronounce correctly.

Using nonsense words prevents the student guessing, compelling him/her to practise the skill of rapidly breaking words into manageable chunks and recognising graphemes (see Diliberto et al., 2009). As a result, the student is better able to rapidly and accurately decode unfamiliar words. Each nonsense word is composed of the grapheme being learned plus graphemes from previous units, further reinforcing these sound-symbol relationships. Once the student has learned more than one way in which a grapheme can be pronounced, the use of the alternative pronunciations should be encouraged. 

The student reads one row each day, drawing in all the dots, dividing lines, connector lines and arrows on all words. Three real words are included in each week which the student attempts to locate.

Practice

A key component of this exercises is for the student to say the sound out loud while writing the letter(s). Once picture stories are introduced, students should try recalling the story before doing the practice activity.