Strategies, Practices and Tools
Decades of research provides a clear understanding of how skilled reading develops and how to most effectively support children in learning to read proficiently. Evidence-based, structured literacy instruction develops all the foundational language and literacy skills that must be woven together so that children can make meaning from the words they read.
The information presented here is intended to complement evidence-based core reading curricula and intervention programs already in place and help educators fill in gaps or modify their approaches with effective strategies, instructional practices, and tools and activities to implement them.
Early childhood educators can focus their practices to help children build language and emergent literacy skills. Pre-K and K-3 educators can find evidence-based ways to provide explicit, implicit, and incidental instruction across the essential components of literacy. And English Language Arts teachers across grades 4-12 will find effective practices to help students meet the increasing need for skilled reading.
Instructional Strategy
Build students’ word analysis skills so students can read complex multisyllabic words.
For students in fourth grade and beyond, most of the words they encounter while reading are words with two or more syllables. The inability to decode these multisyllabic words will hinder the student’s ability to extract meaning from the text. Advanced word study instruction addresses how to read and spell multi-syllable words, including words that derived from Latin and Greek that include prefixes and suffixes. Equipping students with these strategies will help ensure students understand what they are reading.
Source: Arizona English Language Arts Standards; Honig et al., 2018; Sedita, 2023
Effective Practices
- Teach how to use the six syllable patterns.
- Teach how to use morphology (e.g., roots and affixes) to decode multisyllabic words.
- Teach spelling rules during morphology instruction. For example, teach spelling rules for adding suffixes.
- Teach students the meaning of common roots and affixes.
- Provide ample opportunities for students to practice decoding multisyllabic words in grade level text.
Source: Lane, 2014; Sedita 2023; Boardman et al., 2008
Tools and Activities
Suffix Dictionary (Graphic Organizer)
Utilize the Suffix Dictionary graphic organizer for students to record the meaning of suffixes. It can also be utilized to help children find patterns in word endings.
Download from Iowa Research Center
Related
Developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade.
Evidence-based reading interventions support students who are identified as struggling with specific foundational literacy skills.
Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.
While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.