When reading a word, readers use the sounds (phonemes) each letter or group of letters (graphemes) represents to decode the word and read it correctly.

If you see students who . . .

• read words incorrectly because they don’t look across the letters in the word.
• look at the beginning letter or letters and guess a word that fits in the sentence without looking at the rest of the word.
• repeatedly mix up words that look similar because they are not distinguishing one sound from another.
• use pictures to determine a word without looking at letters and stretching the sounds out.

Listening carefully to sounds helps readers read accurately. Moving left to right through a word, saying each sound once for each letter or letter combination, helps readers determine how many sounds are represented by the letters.

You need to know the sounds of the letters you are reading, and where the beginning and end of a word is. Say the sounds slowly and then together and ask, “Does it sound right?”

We teach this strategy to beginning readers. Using a shared text, we model and think aloud. This gives children a chance to see what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like to Listen Carefully to Sounds. It also gives them a chance to hear what you are thinking as you use this strategy.

When reading, it is important to pay attention to the details of each letter and word. When you are first learning to read, this takes awareness and focus, but the more you read, the more automatic it becomes. Sometimes a reader just wants to get through the text, and as a result they read too fast and make errors. This changes the meaning of the text and can make it hard to understand. To keep this from happening, we use the strategy Listen Carefully to Sounds. To do this, we slow our rate of reading down, paying close attention to the sounds that form the words we are reading. We look at a word within text and focus student attention on the sounds the letters and letter combinations make. To focus their attention, we may use colored highlighter tape or strips of colored acetate sheets, laying the colors over the letters as we read the sounds slowly. Repeating this process over and over will raise readers’ level of awareness and slow them down so they pay careful attention to the sounds represented by letters in a word. As we read, we constantly check to make sure the text makes sense.

Once readers slow down to focus on sounds, we help them read the words correctly by coaching them to end their decoding with, “Did that sound right? Did that make sense?”

Suggested Language

• What letters do you see?
• Look closely at each letter and say the word slowly. How many sounds do you hear?
• Look closely at each word.
• Does what you read make sense?

• Orthographically mapping the word will help the reader focus attention on the sounds represented by letters or letter combinations in the word.
• At points of difficulty, ask students to point to the beginning letter of a word they are struggling with, and prompt them to say the sound. Use a colored overlay to follow the sounds in words and the words in sentences so they are read in order.

Consider materials, setting, instructional practices, and cognitive processes.

These strategies may provide support before, during, and after teaching this strategy:

• Read Texts That Are a Good Fit
• Map It
• Say the Word Slowly
• Look for Word Parts