Word

Recognition
CORE Subjects EC-6:
English

TExES

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Phonics and Word Recognition

Phonics and Word Recognition Skills – are skills that help students
dissect new words to determine pronunciation and meaning. These skills are extremely
vital as they play a major role in students’ ability to read with fluency and comprehension.
The goals of teaching these skills are to ensure that students understand:

• The relationship between letters and sounds

• That the sounds of words in speech are made up of letter patterns
• That acquiring meaning from what is read can be done through rapidly and
correctly recognizing words

Reading studies and research tell us that, as in all skill advancement, students vary in their
rate of development even though the skills can be developed in a predictable sequence.
Phonics and word recognition skills include:

• Letter–sound correspondence
• Decoding
• Blending
• Structural analysis
• Sight word vocabulary
• Contextual analysis

In order to assess students for their understanding and mastery of the phonemes’ sounds
of individual letters, a teacher needs to do individual assessments. One test is called a
“Nonsense Word Test” which is used to determine students’ actual knowledge of individual
sounds without allowing the knowledge of sight words to interfere with the students’
thinking.

Reading research recognizes that word recognition and phonics skills are scaffolded on
previous skill development including:

• Print awareness
• Alphabetic knowledge
• Phonological and phonemic awareness
• Alphabetic principle
• Decoding
• Irregular/high frequency words

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Systematic phonics and word recognition instruction have been found by research to help
students in a number of ways:

• Is more helpful than non–systematic instruction or no phonics instruction

• Improves word recognition and spelling of students in kindergarten and first grade
• Enhances students’ reading comprehension
• Is valuable to students from all backgrounds
• Has favorable effects on at–risk students in preventing reading difficulties
• Is most effective when introduced at an early age

Word analysis skills include recognizing and using:

• Synonyms – are words with the same or a similar meaning such as

angry/mad/furious; bad/evil/immoral/tainted; and fast/quick/rapid.
• Antonyms – are words with the opposite meanings such as hot/cold; and big/little.
• Homographs – words that have the same spelling as another word but have
different meaning. For example: tire meaning fatigue (verb) and tire also meaning a
rubber cushion that fits around a wheel of an automobile (noun).
• Homophones – words that are pronounced the same as another word but have a
different meaning and may be spelled differently. Examples include: carat, carrot,
caret, or to, too, two.
• Analogies – are used to compare two things that are usually thought of as different
but have something in common. Some examples are hand is to glove as foot is to
sock; and cold is to hot as wet is to dry. These can be fun especially when students
develop analogies themselves.

Some important terms related to phonics and word recognition skills include:

• Blending – Combining sounds (such as syllables) together to form into a word(s).

• Consonant blend – Two consonants working together to form one sound such as bl,
cl, cr, fl, and br.
• Consonant digraphs – Two consonants that blend together but lose their own
sound and create a new one such as: ch, tch, sh, th, wh, ng, ck, kn, –dge, and ph.
• Context clues or contextual analysis – Using the words before and after an
unknown word to help determine its meaning. This is a strategy that needs to be
modeled and practiced throughout all of the grades.
• Decoding – Using knowledge of sound–letter relationships, as in phonics, to
pronounce written words; sounding out words. This can be done orally or silently.

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• High frequency irregular words – Cannot be “sounded out” phonetically but are
found frequently in students’ reading such as come, of, was, give, know, two, what,
and whose. Research has found that it is more effective to teach these words prior to
having students read them in a passage, and the words should be practiced daily.
• Morphology – The study of how words are formed in language. Morphology refers
to root words, prefixes, suffixes, abbreviations, and contractions. A “morpheme” is the
smallest meaningful unit in a language and cannot be divided into smaller
grammatical parts.
• Prefix – A letter or group of letters attached to the front of a word and that changes
the word’s meaning. Some of the most common prefixes are: un, re, in, im, il, ir
(meaning not), dis, en, em, non, in, im, over, and mis.
• “R” controlled sounds – ir, er, ur, ar, and or.
• Root words– Base words to which prefixes, suffixes, and syllables can be added.
Some common Greek and Latin roots are: aud meaning “hear”, astro meaning “star”,
and dict which means “speak or tell.”
• Systematic phonics instruction – Direct teaching in a sequential program of
letter–sound relationships including both vowels and consonants.
• Non–Systematic phonics instruction – Programs that usually do not sequentially
teach letter–sound relationships – including consonants and vowels. Instead
phonics instruction is done more informally, according to the teachers’ perception
of what is needed.
• Phonetically regular words – Words in which the letters follow common
phonemic patterns; all of the letters can be decoded/sounded out. For example: cat,
dog, me, no, him, and kin.
• Phonics – The way words sound and their corresponding letters and the rules
which specify how those sounds relate to each other in a given language.
• Semantics – The understanding of the meaning of a word, sign/symbol, or sentence.
Words, signs, and symbols can have many different meanings depending how they
are used in a sentence. For example: “I love…” can have different meanings; and
“Let’s not crash….” can refer to an auto accident, cymbals being struck together, or
going to a party without being invited. These skills are particularly challenging for
ELL students.
• Sight word vocabulary – Words that students can quickly and easily identify.
Included with these are high–frequency irregular words such as who, why, you, they,
of, and where. Irregular words cannot be decoded.
• Structural analysis/cues – Using the structure of a word to help pronounce it and
know its meaning. Examples include the understanding and rules for:
short and long vowels the meanings of simple prefixes, suffixes, root words, and
compound words

• Suffix – A letter or letters at the end of a root word that changes its meaning. Some
of the most common suffixes are: s, es, ed, ing, ly, er, or, ion, tion, able, and ible.
• Syntax – Rules that govern the proper word arrangement to make phrases, clauses,
and sentences. Syntax can help identify both word identification and meaning.

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• “Think aloud” – How to use/apply this and other strategies. To “think aloud” means
that the teacher models and teaches students to say out loud what they are thinking
when they are reading and trying to recognize, analyze, or decode words. This kind
of modeling can be done by the teacher when reading aloud and stopping from time
to time to “think aloud” with comments such as: “This words starts with ch and ends
with t. What are those sounds in the middle? “
• Vowel digraphs – Two vowels that make only one sound such as oo as in foot, oo as
in “moon,” ea as in “eat,” ea as in “bread,” ee as in feet, ow as in “how,” and ow as in
“snow.”
• Vowel diphthongs – Two vowels blending together to make a sound in which both
vowels are usually heard: oy, ow, oi, ou, and aw. Vowel diphthongs are sometimes
referred to as “gliding vowels.”

Strategies that can be used to enhance students’ abilities in the areas of phonics and
word recognition are:

• Constantly model decoding of words that are consistent with taught rules of sound–
letter relationships.

• Provide numerous opportunities for children to read from high–interest texts that
include many words that adhere to taught rules of sound–letter relationships along
with high–frequency and other types of words that make the stories seem more
accessible.

• Provide games in which students can “play with” small words or individual letters to
put together to make one syllable or multi–syllabic words. This can be done with
cards or on the computer. One game is called Word Building and uses the letters
(written, plastic, felt, etc.) from a larger word to see how many smaller words can be
made from the letters in a specific amount of time. Another word building game is
when students are given many cards; each one has written on it a familiar prefix,
suffix, or root. Students see how many new words they can make either by
themselves or as a group activity.

• Model and practice the identification of word parts such as prefixes, suffixes, and
roots when reading orally and/or introducing new vocabulary. By providing
instruction in the meaning and sounds of these affixes, students will be better able
to determine word pronunciation and meaning. Teachers sometimes have students
keep notebooks in which they list the affixes/roots and write and/or draw the
meaning of these word parts.

• Play games or provide practice in which children sort words into groups according
to action (verbs); person, place or thing (noun); or adjectives (describing words).

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• Develop Word Walls for vocabulary development and use daily, not only with sight
and irregular words but with content–related vocabulary. Additions can be made to
the Word Wall by designating certain areas for nouns, verbs, prefixes, content–
related words, etc. Give students opportunities to add new words by saying and
spelling the word and explaining in which category/area it should go.

• Read aloud using regular–sized and Big Books, fiction, and non–fiction depending on
the age and grade of students. Point to words and pictures as appropriate; this will
help students understand the relationship between written and spoken words.

• Model and practice the use of context clues for word understanding and meaning.
When reading in any context and there are unknown words, use the surrounding
words to help determine the meaning of the unknown word. Using the practice of
“thinking aloud” can be helpful in modeling the use of context clues for word
identification.

• Model and have students practice using dictionaries, glossaries, and other sources
including technology to verify the meaning, spelling, and usage of unfamiliar words.

• As students make progress in phonics and word recognition activities, give them a
stack of letter tiles or magnetic letters. Ask them to find a letter that has been
recently studied and try to add letters to this letter to make a word.

• Play phonics “Bingo.” Make Bingo cards with letters of the alphabet on them – with
9–12 squares. Say a word and clearly enunciate the beginning sound. Have students
mark the letter that matches the sound. Play the game as Bingo. This activity is for
younger students. However, for students more advanced in phonics, Bingo can be
played by writing on the board a list of 10–12 recently studied sounds such as pl, bl,
la, ga, ma, ch, cl, tr, dr, etc. Students pick 3 or 4 sounds and write them on a piece of
paper. The teacher reads out the sounds. Play the game as Bingo; the first student
who gets three of their sounds chosen (or all of them), gets to say “bingo”.

• Play “High Frequency Bingo.” Make Bingo cards as above, but this time, write on
each square a high frequency word that has been studied. Read off the list of words
and have students cover each word called as in Bingo, after spelling it and saying it.
This activity could be used for 2–3rd grades as a review.

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• Play “Point and Eraser” when working on two sounds that are challenging such as
the ‘b’ and ‘p’ sounds. Designate one sound for the point of the pencil and the other
sound for the eraser. (This can also be played with ’thumbs up, thumbs down”.)
When the teacher says a word beginning with ‘b,’ students hold up the eraser; if it
starts with a ‘p’, students hold up the point of the pencil. For older students this can
be played by having them listen for designated sounds anywhere in the words.

• Have students do word–building activities with words or word parts with which
they are familiar. Have them write small words or word parts across the top of the
paper. Give them a specific number of minutes to see who has made the most new
words in a column. Have the “winner” read off his words to ensure that they are real
words. This kind of activity can be a basis for using known word parts to determine
new words with similar meanings.

• Provide ongoing communication with families. Let parents and/or caregivers

understand the importance of reading aloud to their children and the value of
discussing words and stories. Either direct or indirect communication through
newsletters, emails, conferences, calls, or a parent night are often very helpful in
educating families to the need for this kind of interaction. Sending home books to be
read aloud and directing families to local libraries or other community resources are
also good ways to increase family involvement and student skill attainment in
analyzing and identifying words and overall literacy skills.

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