Free Decoding Words Worksheets
Kenneth Melniczek
Decoding, in reading, is where we use our knowledge of letter-sound relationships and begin to correctly pronounce letter patterns that we run across. Students that struggle with reading often have a great deal of difficulty with this skill. This often does not come naturally and takes a good bit of practice. This makes decoding a huge pre-reading skill. As we learn to become better decoders, we learn how to recognize words, and as result their meaning, very swiftly. There are many different approaches that teachers can take to introduce this to students. In this section we will focus our materials on the standard approach that most educators follow. If you would like to explore a few different methods, scroll to the bottom of this page where we discuss various selected techniques. Take a look below for just over a baker's dozen worksheets and answer keys to help you learn how to relate words with the sounds that are located within them.
Decoding with Beginning and End Sounds - The first part of the word is the beginning sound. The last part of the word isthe end sound. Sometimes the beginning and end sounds of words canbe very similar, and if we try to read too fast, we get the word wrong.Paying close attention to beginning and end sounds, as well as to thecontext of the sentence, can help you to make sure that you get theword right.
Skippy the Frog - As you read, use the Skippy the Frog strategy for wordsyou do not know. Write each word that you do not know in a lilypad. When you finish reading, start again from the beginning. Areyou able to decode any of the words that you skipped the first time?
Lips the Fish - As you read, use the Lips the Fish strategy for words you don't know.Write each word that you don't know in a box. Get your lips readyand make the sound of each letter. Are you able to figure out theword?
Eagle Eye - As you read, use the Eagle Eye strategy forwords you do not know. Write each word that you do not know on aline. Then look at the picture. Does anything in the picture start withthe same beginning sound as the word that you wrote?
Before students begin to work on the process of decoding, it is especially important for them to be immersed in a wide range of phonological awareness activities. This is the foundation that is required in order to be able to decode well. If you follow a phonics-based approach at your school, this can be a moot point. If your reading program centers more around a whole language approach, you will need to spend a good amount of time focusing on sounds, blends, and other phonics centered practices. You need your students to have a decent range of seeing how words are just a bunch of sounds put together to create a full-length sound. Just like a musical band is not just a singer or percussion or brass or wood, rather it is a blend of all those things into one.
A solid strategy to help students envision the flow of letters within a word is to air write them. Just like, air guitar, students will use their fingers to draw the shape of the letters in the air. This is a great strategy to help them mentally focus on letters and the shapes that they make. I would remind students to keep in simple and focus on only using lower case letters. In action, students are usually much more successful at them than upper case letters. What I find that this really helps students begin to understand letter spacing within a word. You will find that students will either pack them in to tight or have them so loose, that it cannot be recognized as an actual word.
We then move into territory where the teacher works one-on-one with the student. There is a simple series of steps. Throughout this entire process, you will want to keep track of each student's progress. This will be helpful as you repeat lessons and can identify where they are at with their skills. Start by having them identify a vowel before the student even reads the word. Then have them break the word into sounds and begin to pronunciate it. Ask them to pay specific attention to a spelling pattern that they may recognize. Are there any blends present? Are there any common prefixes present? They will make many mistakes along the way. Always reinforce with positive feedback and consistency.
The next step is making sight words automatic. You can do this by using a sight word list that arranged by word use frequency. Have students look through each column and write down any words that they do not know. Once you have all those words write them on individual note cards. I would then have them arrange the note cords in long and short word piles. From there it is simple repeated repetition to help you learn and memorize these words. Sight words are the backbone of strong reading.
Did you know there is a downward spiral of reading failure? It starts with the foundational skills. Beginning readers who have difficulty learning to read words accurately and fluently may continue on a downward spiral, making it harder and harder to catch up.
Research tells us that, in order to read fluently, students need to learn to decode unknown words accurately and automatically. Students who must use all of their mental energy to sound out words are not able to focus on the meaning of what they are reading (LaBerge and Samuels, 1974). In fact, research shows that those students who have not developed automaticity in decoding by the beginning of second grade are at risk for reading failure (Berninger et al., 2003, Berninger et al., 2006).
Then, students do repeated reading by reading down each column and then across each row for several one-minute timings. You can time the whole group or teach students to use individual timers.
Try this strategy to build automaticity in phonics and word recognition with your students, using words from your current phonics program and high-frequency word list. A free phonics worksheet and graph are available for download here:
The Lesson Planning & Implementation Support guide provides a brief overview of the UFLI Foundations lesson steps, including the materials needed and the basic procedures for implementing each step. This can serve as a handy reminder as you learn to implement the lessons.
We have also provided printable version of the Individual Sound wall charts. You may choose to glue them into a file folder for each student or print them front/back to laminate. These may also be enlarged and printed as posters if your classroom space does not allow for the full UFLI Sound Wall displays.
The printable grapheme cards may be used for general review of grapheme-phoneme correspondences. They may also be used as an alternative to Visual Drill slides in Step 2: Visual Drill or the Virtual Blending Board in Step 4: Blending Drill, especially for small-group or one-on-one implementation of the lessons.
The Word Work Mat can be used in Step 6: Word Work, or any time students need to use manipulative letters for encoding and decoding practice. The Word Work Mat can be used by the teacher, the students, or both, to practice reading and spelling words.
The Printable Alphabet Tiles and Mat are designed to be sent home along with the Home Support Guide. Families can use these paper tiles as manipulative letters for home practice with word work. Printing them on card stock makes them easier to use.
The materials on this site are freely available for anyone to use, adapt, and share (with attribution), but no one is permitted to sell either the original materials, any adaptation of it, or lesson plans that reproduce any part of it. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. These materials are to be used for educational purposes only.
This is one of the most comprehensive collections of phonics worksheets available online. We encourage you to work with this section on a daily basis through the school year. The worksheet categories that you find below will lead you to areas that are great for pre-readers. Please Note: You will find all of these phonics topic categories available off of the navigation bar on the left. I would highly recommend getting your color ink out for these guys.
Phonics is the process of teaching to read and correlate the sounds of alphabet letters. Kids can learn the sounds of different letters using phonological awareness. Phonics helps students learn to identify relationships between words and sounds. This helps them learn to master the alphabet pretty quickly. The techniques that we explore here will help you how to logical organize the sounds of words, it will also help you learn to predict the pronunciation of terms that are new to you. Research has shown that phonics instruction can dramatically improves a student's ability to recognizing new vocabulary and understand what they read. Phonics is a method for approaching teaching student how to both read and write. One of the main focuses when reading is to sound out words. Over my teaching career I have taught using both phonics and whole language as my core strategies. I have found students that begin their pre-reading skills with phonics end up being better spellers later in life. My guess is that it is because they started reading words by always sounding it out.
Phonics and decoding are the pre-requisites of reading and comprehension. Teaching phonics to elementary school kids is an essential step. It sets the ground for literary learning students. To make sure your kids pronounce the words correctly, it is mandatory to teach them phonics first. Fluent reading and comprehension come from phonological knowledge. If your kids can decode the sound of alphabet letters correctly, they can distinguish between different different terms.
Teaching phonics to elementary school kids requires a systematic approach. You may need to start with the easy letters first. As we already know, English alphabet letters vary based on their sounds. You may not want to overburden your kids on the first day. Once they learn the easy ones, you can proceed to the complicated letters. If you teach them the two together, they may get confused.
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