• Decoding new words: Students learn to break words into sounds and blend them, unlocking new vocabulary and text, especially when breaking down larger, multisyllabic words.

• Multisyllabic words: Once passages or texts become more difficult due to the increase of multisyllabic words, students who don't know these words will begin to guess or skip over these words which leads to limited comprehension. Getting your child to read aloud will allow you to know which words they might be guessing at, skipping over or just don't know. Silent reading does not do this. 

• Morphemes: These are the smallest unit of meaning and are not just groups of sounds, but building blocks like root (base) words, prefixes, and suffixes. Eg., dis-respect-ful. When decoding complex words and unfamiliar words, knowing how to break them down into meaningful parts improves reading and confidence. 

• Building fluency: As decoding becomes automatic, less mental energy is used on sounding out, freeing up working memory for comprehension.

• Improving spelling: Understanding letter-sound patterns and the spelling of prefixes and suffixes, directly supports accurate spelling. 

• Effective for diverse learners: High-quality phonics helps nearly all students, including those with dyslexia.

• Long-term benefits: Develops confidence, independence, a love of reading, and supports digital literacy and academic achievement.

Digital Games 

From The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk - check out a video in the Helping Your Kid With: Reading Multisyllable Words series from the University of Texas. The video will take you through an overview of how to teach this. The resource on the right contains the parent instructions and then student cards you will use with your child.