Decoding Strategies: How to Teach Decoding (6 Strategies)

Share or save this post!

When a student gets to a word they don’t know, guessing from the picture or the first letter isn’t a strategy. They need a way to work through the word sound by sound or chunk by chunk.

These are the 6 decoding strategies I teach beginning and struggling readers, including two I picked up working at a dyslexia school. Each one includes how I teach it, and there are practice activities at the end.

What is decoding?

Decoding is sounding out a written word. The reader connects each letter or letter pattern to its sound, then blends those sounds into a word.

Reading Rockets defines decoding as “the ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Understanding these relationships gives children the ability to recognize familiar words quickly and to figure out words they haven’t seen before.”

Decoding is also how new words get stored for fast reading later. Each time a student sounds out a word correctly, they connect its spelling to its pronunciation. After enough accurate reads, they recognize the word on sight. Linnea Ehri calls this process orthographic mapping.

A few students seem to pick up decoding with very little instruction. Many more need it taught explicitly, and students with dyslexia need a lot of explicit practice.

Teaching Decoding Skills

Decoding rests on two skills. Phonemic awareness is hearing and working with the individual sounds in spoken words. Phonics is knowing which letters and letter patterns spell those sounds.

If a student can’t hear the three sounds in map, or doesn’t know that sh says /sh/, they can’t sound out the word. That’s why phonemic awareness and phonics come first.

As words get longer, morphology helps too. Morphology is knowing the meaningful parts of words, like prefixes, suffixes, and base words. A student who recognizes the prefix un and the ending ing can break those off and decode what’s left.

With every strategy below, model it many times before students try it alone. As always, use I do, we do, you do, so students see exactly how to apply it.

What the Research Says About Teaching Decoding

The IES practice guide on foundational skills for kindergarten through 3rd grade (Foorman et al., 2016) gives a strong level of evidence to teaching students to decode words, analyze word parts, and write and recognize words. One of its first steps is teaching students to blend sounds from left to right within a word.

For older students, the IES guide on reading interventions for grades 4 to 9 (Vaughn et al., 2022) puts decoding first. Its top recommendation, also rated strong, is building students’ decoding skills so they can read complex multisyllabic words. That includes teaching a routine students can use on any long word.

The K to 3 guide also advises against prompting students to guess words from pictures. That’s the problem with three cueing, which teaches students to figure out words using pictures, sentence meaning, and the first letter. At least 11 states had banned three cueing by the end of 2024. Georgia passed a ban in 2025, and Missouri barred it as a primary teaching method the same year.

6 Decoding Strategies to Teach

These go roughly from simplest to most advanced. Continuous blending is enough for CVC words. Longer words usually need two or three of the other strategies together.

1. Continuous Blending

Many of us were taught to have students tap each sound with a pause in between, then blend: /m/ … /a/ … /p/ … map. The trouble is that by the time a struggling reader gets to the last sound, they’ve often lost the first one.

Continuous blending (also called connected phonation) has students stretch each sound into the next without stopping: mmmaaap. Gonzalez-Frey and Ehri (2021) compared the two methods with beginning readers and found the connected version worked better for decoding unfamiliar words.

How I teach it:

• Put your finger under the first letter and slide it under the word as you say the sounds.
• Hold each sound until you get to the next one.
• Start with words that begin with sounds you can hold, like /m/, /s/, /f/, /n/, /l/, and /r/.
• For stop sounds like /k/, /t/, and /p/, say them quickly and move straight into the vowel: caaat.

What it sounds like:

Teacher: Watch my finger. Mmmaaap. Map. Your turn. Students: Mmmaaap. Map.

Segmenting still matters. Students use it for spelling, when they break a spoken word into sounds so they can write each one.

Read more: How To Teach Blending | How To Teach Segmenting

2. Spot and Dot

Spot and dot is a technique I learned when I worked at the dyslexia school, and it works really well for decoding longer words.

Students look at the word and draw a dot over every vowel. Each vowel sound usually means one syllable, so the dots tell them how many parts to look for. A vowel team like ai or ee gets one dot, since the two letters make one sound.

Students can also label the vowels and consonants with a V and C below the word. In napkin, they dot the a and the i, see two consonants between them, and know they’re looking at a VCCV word with two syllables.

3. Cover and Slide

Another technique we used at the dyslexia school was covering up part of a word with a finger or an index card.

Many students get overwhelmed looking at a long word all at once. Covering the rest of the word lets them focus on one sound or chunk at a time.

How it works with fantastic:

• Cover everything except fan and read it.
• Slide the card to show tas and read it.
• Slide again to show tic and read it.
• Uncover the word and read all three parts together: fantastic.

4. Break Off Word Parts (the BEST Strategy)

For words with prefixes and suffixes, I like the BEST strategy from Rollanda O’Connor’s book Teaching Word Recognition.

• B: Break off the word parts you know, like a prefix or suffix.
• E: Examine what’s left and underline the vowels.
• S: Say each part.
• T: Try the whole word in the sentence.

With unpacking, a student breaks off un and ing, examines pack, says each part, then reads unpacking and checks that it makes sense in the sentence. The last step is a check, not a guess. The student has already decoded every part.

O’Connor suggests practicing BEST for a few minutes a day for at least three weeks before expecting students to use it on their own. Teach common endings like tion as one chunk, since they’re pronounced the same way in almost every word.

5. Split Syllables Flexibly

Splitting syllables is very helpful for figuring out vowel sounds and breaking up multisyllabic words. Students find the vowels, look at the consonants between them, split the word, and read each part. For this to work, students need to know the six syllable types.

Read more: Syllable Division Rules: How To Divide Words Into Syllables & The Six Syllable Types

Syllable division rules work often, but not every time. In a 2020 analysis of English words, Devin Kearns found that splitting between two consonants (VC/CV) gave a closed first syllable about 70% of the time. Splitting before a single consonant (V/CV) gave a long first vowel only about 47% of the time in two syllable words.

So I teach the split as a first try, not a final answer. If the first split doesn’t make a word the student knows, they try the other split.

Student: Le/mon. Leemon? That’s not a word. Teacher: Try splitting after the m. Student: Lem/on. Lemon!

6. Flex the Vowel

Sometimes a student decodes a word almost right. They read snow to rhyme with cow, or read find with a short i so it sounds like fin with a d. Flexing means trying another sound the vowel or vowel team can make until the word matches one they know.

Researchers call this skill set for variability. It’s the ability to hear a pronunciation that’s a little off and connect it to the right word. Laura Steacy and her colleagues found it predicts word reading even after accounting for phonemic awareness, letter sound knowledge, and vocabulary.

How I prompt it:

Student: /s/ /n/ /ow/, like cow.
Teacher: Does that sound like a word you know?
Student: No.
Teacher: Ow can also say /ō/, like in grow. Try that sound.
Student: Snow. Oh, snow!

Flexing only works when the word is in the student’s spoken vocabulary. With English learners, or with any word a student has never heard, tell them the word and talk about what it means.

What to Say Instead of “Look at the Picture”

If you’re moving away from cueing prompts, it helps to have new ones ready. These are the prompts I use, in roughly the order a student would need them:

• “Put your finger under it and blend it.”
• “Find the vowels. How many parts do you see?”
• “Is there a part you know? Break it off.”
• “Cover the end and read the first part.”
• “Does that sound like a word you know? Try the other vowel sound.”
• After the student reads the word: “Does that make sense in the sentence?”

The last one is about checking. Meaning confirms a word the student already decoded. It doesn’t replace decoding.

Read more: Spotting and Correcting Common Decoding Errors

Decoding Words Activities

Once students have been taught these decoding strategies, they need practice. Try some of these decoding words activities to solidify these skills

Decodable Books

Decodable books are a great way to follow up on a phonics lesson and practice decoding words.

Many curricula come with a decodable story, but you can also get books and passages to supplement the lesson, or make your own.

Read more: Decodable Books or Leveled Books? Which are better? & Ultimate List of Decodable Texts

Blending Drills

Blending drills give students quick, repeated practice decoding words. Use phonogram cards or letter tiles for sounds students know. You can have two or three piles of letters, such as a pile of vowels and a pile of consonants. Start with VC or CVC words.

Build a word and have students blend it. Then swap one card or tile and have them blend the new word. Keep going until students have read several words.

Blending cards work well for students who need more support. Students point to each sound, say it, and blend the word. Many come with pictures so students can check their answers.

Word Lists, Then Sentences

For older students working on long words, have them read a short list of multisyllabic words with a target pattern, then read the same words in sentences. This follows the practice routine in the grades 4 to 9 IES guide and helps students carry the strategy into connected text.

Fluency Grids

Fluency grids provide practice decoding specific phonics patterns in isolation. These are great for students struggling with certain phonics skills.

Nonsense Words

Don’t forget to use nonsense words. Using nonsense words tells you whether a student is decoding or just remembering words they’ve seen before.

Decoding Strategies Bookmarks

I created these bookmarks a few years ago to help my students recall strategies they can use to decode unfamiliar words. They’re part of my SOR Quick Start Guide, which you can download for free by signing up below.

Bottom Line

Decoding is how students read words they’ve never seen before. Start with continuous blending, then add the other strategies one at a time as the words get longer. Model each one many times before students try it on their own.

If you’re not sure where a student’s decoding is breaking down, start with an assessment. My post on reading assessments to evaluate decoding and encoding walks through the options.

Sources:

• Foorman, B., et al. (2016). Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. IES, What Works Clearinghouse.
• Gonzalez-Frey, S. M., & Ehri, L. C. (2021). Connected phonation is more effective than segmented phonation for teaching beginning readers to decode unfamiliar words. Scientific Studies of Reading, 25(3), 272–285.
• Kearns, D. M. (2020). Does English have useful syllable division patterns? Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1).
• O’Connor, R. E. Teaching Word Recognition: Effective Strategies for Students with Learning Difficulties. Guilford Press.
• Reading Rockets: Word Decoding and Phonics
• Spear-Swerling, L. Structured Literacy Interventions.
• Steacy, L. M., et al. (2019). The role of set for variability in irregular word reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23(6), 523–532.
• Vaughn, S., et al. (2022). Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9. IES, What Works Clearinghouse.

---

Want to remember this? Save 6 Effective Strategies To Teach Decoding to your favorite Pinterest board!

Share or save this post!