In first grade, your child becomes a more skillful decoder and can do these things:

• Blend or break apart the individual sounds (phonemes The smallest parts of spoken language that combine to form words. ) of most one- syllable A word or word part that contains one vowel sound. words, like sip and bat
• Read words with long vowel sounds (see, say, so)
• Begin to sound out more complex words, including words with silent “e” at the end.

Decoding Words Strategies

• 1. Segmenting sounds: We look at the letters in unknown words. We identify each sound as we move from left to right.
• 2. Blending sounds: We touch and say the sound in each letter as we blend them together.
• 3. Chunking familiar parts of the word: When we start decoding bigger words. ...