Word Recognition Interventions

The activities on this page includes explicit decoding strategies that you can use to support your students' ability to decode multi-syllabic words. Remember, in addition to being taught these activities, students also need multiple opportunities to practice applying the strategies in connected text at their instructional level! As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your students' strengths and needs in the whole learner domains. 

After students have mastered decoding single syllable words (including all letter patterns and syllable types), they are ready to learn to decode multi-syllabic words. To read multi-syllabic words, students are encouraged to apply strategies they have already learned (e.g., reading a compound word by putting the two words together, identifying syllable types and blending the syllables together), as well as to learn new strategies that may help them. 

Before you teach students to read multi-syllabic words, make sure that they are able to divide written words into syllables. Once students are able to segment written words into syllables, they can visually discriminate between word parts.

The following information is sourced from O'Connor, R. (2014). Teaching word recognition: Effective strategies for students with learning difficulties (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Instruction in breaking down longer words can begin unambiguously with the recognition of compound words (e.g., into, doghouse, baseball). Teaching students to find the short words in longer words is a useful first step because the same approach is encouraged in more complex strategies such as BEST and DISSECT and those of Ehri and colleagues when students become more sophisticated readers. 

Although spelling words with inflected endings requires knowledge of rules, reading words with endings that include -ing and -ed verbs (asking, planted), plurals or possession (dogs, dresses, hers), or comparisons (older, oldest) is much easier, and words with these variations appear often in the printed materials students read in first grade and beyond. Show students first how to look for these endings and then how to detach or cover these endings. With this simple strategy, they will be able to read the base word and then connect the ending back to read the whole word. 

Many first-grade words also end with the unaccented /l/ sound found in words like little, puzzle, and puddle. Because the first syllable is often decodable using the most common sounds for alphabet letters, the same strategy used for inflected endings (cover the -le, read the first syllable, uncover, and connect the whole word) usually elicits a correct pronunciation of these two-syllable words. 

Let's try a quick syllable division demonstration with the word celebrate.

• First, clap the syllables to celebrate aloud.
• Second, write the word down, and demarcate the syllables you heard by using a slash mark. It should look something like this: cel/e/brate.
• Third, examine the syllables for patterns you recognize:
  • cel = CVC (the medial vowel should make a short e sound)
  • e = Schwa (unaccented syllable, the e says "uh")
  • brate = silent "e" syllable (the a should be long since it's a silent e syllable)
• Fourth, say the word, keeping the syllable rules in mind. Cel-uh-brate.

This is a typical strategy you may use as students begin to decode multisyllabic words.

Explicit Instruction

To support your students' understanding of decoding multisyllabic words, you should start by explicitly teaching this concept. This sounds like:

Explain the Skill/Concept. Define multi-syllabic words and explain the activity ("Multi-syllabic words are words that have more than one syllable." "Today, we will learn to read multi-syllabic words by using the BEST strategy.")
Model Skill with Examples. Think aloud about how you figure out how to decode multisyllabic words ("When I see a multisyllabic word, like this one (points to reread), I'm going to try using the BEST strategy. First, I am going to do B, and break off the words parts I know. I see the word read in there. Then I'll do E—Examine what's left. I see these two letters at the beginning, so I'll try sounding them out—"re." Ok, now I'll do S, say each part. "re" "read". Now I'll do my final step, T—try the whole word in context. "Reread. The word is reread.")
Model Skill with Non-Examples. Think aloud about how you identify when you've make an error ("Watch as I use the BEST strategy again." [This time, do the same thing, but say the word incorrectly.] "Ok, I'm going to try reading that word again and see if I can make it make sense. Re-read. That sounds better.")
Practice the Skill. Engage in the activity below to practice the skill with your student, providing feedback as necessary. ("Now you try practicing the BEST strategy to read multi-syllabic words.")

Activity A: BEST 

The following strategy is sourced from O'Connor, R. (2014). Teaching word recognition: Effective strategies for students with learning difficulties (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Two multistep research-based strategies that require students to break apart and analyze long words are DISSECT and BEST. DISSECT (Lenz & Hughes, 1990) was developed for middle school students and includes rules for where to break words (syllable types, described as the role of twos and threes) and dictionary skills for students to use as backup assistance. For students in the elementary school years, the BEST strategy has been shown to be effective; it incorporates many of the same features found in dissect. BEST builds on students' knowledge of affixes and the vowels that signal syllables. To teach the strategy, teachers begin by showing students the acronym and teaching them to pair each letter with the strategy to a decoding action:

• B = Break off the word parts you know
• E = Examine what's left, and underline vowels
• S = Say each part
• T = Try the whole thing in context 

Memorizing the acronym and actions for each letter will take several minutes the first day and less time each day as students review the four parts and learn how to use the acronym. The first step—break the word apart incorporates recognition and isolation of affixes, identification of a base word, and using vowels to separate syllables.

On the first day, include three or four words and guide each step of the strategy. For example, show students the word expedition. If affixes have been taught, then students will recognize ex- and -tion, and will break these parts away from the other. If they have been taught that each word part contains a vowel or vowel team, then that leaves -pe- and -di- as parts to examine. As they say each part, it is likely that students will generate a slowly pronounced version of the word that is close to the correct pronunciation by the time they reach the final step. 

Tell students that they will be breaking words into parts, looking for parts that they know, examining what's left, and then putting the parts back together to read the word. 
Teacher: "We're going to break the word 'reread' apart and put the parts back together using the BEST strategy. First, we'll do B. Which parts of the word do we know?"

Student: "I know read, so I'll break that off."

Teacher: "Excellent. Next, is E—Examine what's left. What do we have left?"

Student: "We have 're' left. Re."

Teacher: "Next is S. We'll say each part. Get ready."

Teacher and Student: "Re. Read."

Teacher: "Now is our final step, T. We'll try to put the whole word together. Ready?"

Teacher and Student: "Reread."  

BEST in Action

Watch this clip to see how to execute BEST. Notice how she provides the student with an anchor chart to remember the steps of the strategy.

Schukraft, S. (2022) The importance of teaching syllable division & decoding strategies. IMSE. Retrieved from https://journal.imse.com/syllable-division-decoding-strategies/

Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly introduced the BEST strategy and given students the opportunity to practice: 
     Teacher, pointing to the word celebrate: "Read this word using the BEST strategy. First, look for the parts you know." 
     Student: "I see cel-, a CVC syllable, and I see brat so the word is celbrat." 

In such a case, what might you do? 

When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout. Here is a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and that students might respond better to some types of feedback than others.

If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try to adjust the activity to your student's needs.