School-Age: Decoding

It is officially summer reading so, alas, I am behind on posting. Last week we learning about decoding and inferences.


1. Discussion
I actually started the program out with a small discussion about what decoding means -- translating or figuring out the meaning of words/sentences based on pictures or words around them. It basic terms it means using the context clues, but I wanted to break that down so that even the kindergartners would understand.


2. Reading (AND activity!)
I had initially planned on using "Du Iz Tak?" by Carson Ellis as my featured book this week but I thought it might be a little too complex for me to use it. When I was doing a little sleuthing around the internet, Book Nerd Mommy Blog did a similar topic but featured "Baloney, Henry P." by Jon Scieszka.

I read the book but would stop when we got to a sentence that included one of the 'alien' words and had the kids help me decode the meanings. They were pretty great at it even though some of the words were trickier than others.


3. Discussion
We had a small discussion after the book about decoding in regards to the book we had just read. Did they think it was easy to decode 'alien'? 


4. Reading + Discussion
I did not read the whole book "Du Iz Tak?", but I did read a few pages to see if the kids could help me translate 'bug'. 

I read three or four pages, having them help me translate the sentences as we went along. After we finished the book, I asked whether translating 'alien' or 'bug' was more difficult. Some thought that 'alien' was easier because you only had to translate one word in the whole sentence. Others preferred 'bug' because the illustrations were easier to interpret and you could pretty much infer whatever you wanted because there was less context.


5. Craft
I found a craft related to "Baloney (Henry P.)" on the I Love 2 Teach Blog. The blog post had downloads for templates to make your very own aliens. Here are some samples of ours:

Notes:
This was a great program and very informative for the kids and parents! I think the topic is very beneficial to our less confident readers, reminding them that even their parents have to use context clues when reading because we don't know all the words on the page!