Sounding It Out Is Just the First Step: Supporting Young Readers

[...]along with going deeper into learning the history and structure of the English language, children learn chunks that give hints about a word's meaning, such as Greek and Latin roots-like aud- from the Latin audire, meaning "to hear"-and common prefixes and suffixes-like un-, multi-, and -ish (Invernizzi & Hayes 2004). While it is easy to rely on semantic cues too much (leading to children guessing instead of reading), they can be helpful when combined with orthographic and syntactic cues. [...]readers are said to use three cueing systems to help them identify words: the graphophonic system (letter-sound cues); the syntactic system (sometimes called structure cues); and the semantic system (or meaning cues) (Goodman 1996). Unfortunately, teacher preparation programs tend not to provide adequate coursework in how to teach reading (NCTQ 2016), and knowledge of orthography (particularly the pattern layer) is lacking among many literacy teachers (KahnHorwitz 2015). When children struggle with learning to read (especially when their peers do not seem to have similar challenges), they might start to doubt their abilities, avoid books whenever possible, and stop trying (Cambria & Guthrie 2010).