We had a call this morning from a customer hoping to help her child increase her fluency with the Reading Horizons program. Discussing this concern with Shantell brought up the need to stress transferring the decoding skills that students gain from the program into their actual reading on the pages of books. Those transferring skills are not obvious to everyone, and we would do well to point them out more. We'll send a newsletter in the near future about this. But in the meantime, here are a four pointers to help with transferring new decoding skills to every-day reading:
#1. Students should use a finger to track. It may slow down the student initially, but this is essential for accurate phonological processing and can be very helpful until the reading becomes more fluent.
#2. Have the student sound out each word, tracking left to right, without stopping or guessing. Have them keep their eyes on the word.
#3. Teach the student explicitly how to apply decoding strategies to unfamiliar or difficult words.
#4. Have the student again sound out the words from left to right after they have figured out the sounds of the word.