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If you remember my blog post last week, I took a few moments to talk about why giving our students time to practice decoding (reading sound by sound) and encoding (writing sound by sound) is so important for primary students. Understanding decoding and encoding helps with reading skills, phonemic awareness and written language. Giving students the opportunity to practice these skills helps them become better readers and writers! I've been working hard this year to give my students more opportunities than ever before to practice encoding and decoding all throughout our daily routine. If you read my blog post last week, you already know how I have adapted one of my students' favourite centres - Écris la salle – to make it better align with the Science of Reading. This week, I wanted to talk about how I have recently switched up another favourite. If you've been following me for awhile, it might be one of your favourites, too -- it's one of my bes...

I wanted to take a few moments today to talk about why giving our students the time to practice decoding words (reading sound by sound) and encoding words (writing sound by sound) is so important for primary students. Understanding decoding and encoding helps with reading skills, phonemic awareness and written language. Decoding allows students to break down unknown words into smaller sounds that are more recognizable. Encoding helps them build words out of smaller sounds. Both of these give students the opportunity to practice these skills. This helps them become better readers and writers in the future! Encoding and decoding should definitely be incorporated into literacy centres or other activities throughout the day. With the right activities, centres can be a great way for students to practice decoding and encoding based on a target sound. They can get valuable practice getting comfortable with decoding and encoding words. But, sometimes it can be challenging ...