Activity Objective

The goal of Tricky Words Strategies: Promoting the Flexible Use of Word-Solving Strategies is to explicitly teach, model and promote students' use of a variety of effective strategies to solve unknown words while reading.

What You Need

Prep Time:

20 minutes
- Select tricky words strategy for mini-lesson
- Prepare strategy card
- Select a text to use when modeling how to use the strategy

Task Time:

20-30 minutes (per strategy)
- Teacher introduces selected tricky word strategy
- Teacher models how to use strategy during reading
- Students practice using strategy during independent reading

Materials Required:

Teacher:
- Construction paper
- Markers
- Selected text

What You Do

Teacher Role:

Direct instruction:
- while teacher introduces tricky word strategy

Modeling:
- while teacher shows students how to use strategy during reading

Supporter:
- while students practice using strategy during independent reading

Student Grouping:

Whole class:
- during introduction of tricky word strategy and modeling of how to use strategy while reading

Individual:
- during independent reading

Assessment Ideas:

- Make observations and record anecdotal comments

- Use a checklist to track the strategies students use most often

- Have students select one strategy as their reading goal, meet with students on a regular basis and provide formative feedback on their strengths and next steps
      a. Track student progress by recording information in a reading log or conference binder

Quick Tips

Activity Extensions:

- Create tricky words strategies book marks for students to refer to during independent reading

- Provide parents with a copy of the tricky words strategies to use at home

- Display the tricky words strategies at the reading and listening centres

- Have students keep a log of some of the tricky words they have solved and the strategies they used

Additional Comments:

- Here is a list of some possible strategies for solving tricky words. The strategies below include prompts for students to analyze the word and prompts for them to use the context for clues. Struggling readers will especially need to be encouraged to use letter-sound information to figure out the word as opposed to just guessing based on the overall look of the word and/or context cues.
      a. Sound it out: 
Encourage students to sound out each letter-sound and try to blend the sounds together. Sometimes teachers call this "stretching the word out" or "getting your lips ready". This strategy works especially well after some explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences.
      b. Look for parts you know: 
Encourage students to look for known parts in a word. These could be smaller words (like "art" in "part"), spelling patterns (like "tion"), or chunks you have taught explicitly (like "an", "am", "ing"). A related strategy would be figuring out if they know a rhyming word (for example, students could recognize that the ending of "brat" is the same as "cat", which they already know).
      c. Try a different vowel sound: 
Encourage students to try both the long and short sound when sounding out single-letter vowels. Teach them explicitly that vowels standing alone usually either say their long sound (which is the same as the letter name), or their short sound (/a/ as in "at", /e/ as in "edge", /i/ as in "in", /o/ as in "on", and /u/ as in "under). At a more advanced level, you can also teach students common variant vowel sounds for digraphs such as "ea" as in bean or bread or "ow" as in grow or cow.
      d. Skip it and come back:
 Encourage students to read on to the end of the sentence and then come back to the beginning and try to "take another run at it". 
      e. Look at the picture for clues: 
Encourage students to look at any pictures and think about what the story is about for ideas about what the word might be.
      f. Check for meaning: 
Encourage students to ask themselves "does this word make sense?" when they have come up with a guess for a word.

- Explicitly teach and model each of your chosen strategies and display them in a central location of the classroom so students can refer to them during independent reading tasks.

- Provide students with individual copies of the tricky words strategies on a keychain for them to keep in their reading tool kits. Encourage students to use their individual keychain during independent reading.

- During shared reading and read alouds refer to the strategy cards and model how to use the strategies. Directing students' attention to the strategy charts on a regular basis fosters literacy independence and problem-solving skills.

Other Adaptations/Modifications:

- Provide individual copies of the tricky words strategies