Sounding Out Words Practice Pages

It’s no secret that sounding out words is still a bit of a struggle for my now 2nd grader. Of course, I don’t want this to be her go-to reading strategy for every word because that just wouldn’t be appropriate.

But truly decodable words, like track or stump, still often trip her up. Instead of reading through the word, she takes bits and pieces of the word to guess a random word. For example, she may take the ck, a, and t out of track and guess CAT.

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**The free printables can be found at the END of this post. Look for the teal download button.

 

Sounding out Words Practice Pages

While I’ve never had her diagnosed with a reading disability, like dyslexia, struggling to read runs in my family. My mom has a few struggles and I used to be a struggling reader myself.

One simple trick I’ve learned is to work with my daughter when she’s fresh in the morning. In our homeschool rotations, we work together first on spelling, then a little later on reading…all before 10am. {This is one of the reasons I think so many classroom teachers have their literacy block before lunch.}

Another quick trick is to make sure the text she’s reading aloud isn’t too long. Once she’s read aloud for about 10 minutes, she begins to tire out and make more mistakes.

Today, I’m sharing another trick that I’m using to help her sound out words. {And there are some free printables, too!}

I’ve shared something similar to this before with our CVC blend and dab pages {pictured above}. But today, we’re dropping the dot paint {you can still use it if you’d like} and grabbing crayons instead.

I first have to ‘fess up and tell you this isn’t totally my idea. When she was coloring the words from our blends & digraphs phonics dice game, I realized what she was doing and how much it was helping her sound through each word. So I created some color and read practice pages for her.

 

These pages are super simple, but help readers remember they are sounding out words from left to right. They start coloring the word at the stared letter and as they color, they make the sound of that letter. As learners go through each letter, they blend the sounds together.

 

Once they know the word, they color in the picture that matches the word they blended.

 

Note: Some words contain digraphs, which are two letters that make one sound. This is indicated by having just one box for the two letters. This is to make sure learners aren’t sounding out digraphs as two separate sounds /s/-/h/, but one /sh/.

 

Also included in this pack are the same pages, but with writing/spelling practice included. Learners are asked to blend sounds AND then separate the sounds back out to spell them.

 

Learners can spell them by tracing them. Or you can make it a little more difficult. Ask learners to fold their paper to hide the colored words they’ve sounded out. After they’ve figured out the word, ask them to spell it without looking. Help them sound through the word, separating the sounds if needed.

 

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Grab the freebie below!

 

Enjoy!
~Becky

 

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