"Beyond Sound it out" Ch. 4 Catching readers

         I often get the opportunity to work with children on their reading while I am at work. We have what's called power half our where they do thirty minutes of homework, reading or writing. Whenever I am reading with a student and they get stuck on a word my initial response is always "sound it out." After reading this chapter I was worried that I had been steering these children in the wrong direction because the reading said that isn't the best response. Sometimes words don't follow the phonetic rules so sounding the words out isn't always an option, this is true for words such as knight, said and know. I don't necessarily think that sounding words out is a bad strategy, however, it can't be the only one that children are taught. The English language would be a lot easier if all words followed the common phonetic rules, however, that's just not the case.
       This chapter talked about how kids sometimes relied too heavily on phonetic knowledge and I see this in a lot of kids that I work with. They look at a word and sound out the first few letters and they guess what the rest of the word is. Majority of the time the word that they guess isn't correct and it doesn't fit with the context of the sentence. I usually tell the child to go back and see if the word makes sense. I am also a big fan of telling beginner readers to read with their fingers. It does slow down the process but it helps them until they become stronger readers. I love that the book said that we don't want to get students through a certain book, we want to teach them skills that they can use on any book.
       I really enjoyed reading this chapter because I know the information is beneficial to not only my future teaching career but right now with the kids I work with. Reading is such an important skill to have and I want to be confident that I can successfully transform my students into really strong readers.