Reading Strategies

Good readers use strategies and last week began our introduction into the eight main reading strategies we will be using all year when we come to words that are tricky.  The first two, I Spy and Say and Slide came our way on Thursday.  We found these were strategies we often use without even thinking about it.  Picture clues are always helpful and sliding our way through the sounds of a word helps us to smooth them out enough to determine what the word is.  It also bears a striking resemblance to another strategy we learned this week in Writer's Workshop:  Stretch it Out.  When we come to a word we don't know how to spell, we can stretch out the sounds as if they were a giant piece of bubble gum, and them transpose all of them on paper.