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Moving Students Away from Reading Sound by Sound

Melissa Orkin, Ph.D

Melissa Orkin is a Developmental Psychologist who specializes in learning disabilities, and achievement motivation. Dr. Orkin trained in the assessmen...t and remediation of reading and learning disabilities with Dr. Maryanne Wolf, at the Tufts’ University Center for Reading and Language Research where she received her doctorate and served as a Program Director. She has worked as a reading teacher in the classroom, and in clinical settings. Dr. Orkin instructs on learning disabilities at Tufts University and has also lectured on reading disabilities at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She contributes to publications on a variety of educational topics including literacy development and executive function skills, and regularly provides professional development workshops and consults with public and private schools on best literacy practices. Read more

Moving Students Away from Reading Sound by Sound

This blog post is aimed at educators based in the United States. As such, it may contain advice and practices that are not standard or accepted in other countries. Please use your best judgment when choosing to adopt strategies for your classroom.

                                                                                                                                               

In the middle of the year, Sienna, a first grader, has made solid progress in her reading. She knows the letters and corresponding sounds of the alphabet, can read and spell many CVC words, and recognizes a number of high-frequency “trick words” with automaticity. Yet, when she encounters new or slightly more complex words, she sometimes reverts to reading letter by letter — sounding out each part instead of reading fluently.

This scenario is common. Many young readers develop a strong foundation in phonics but still need targeted support to move from painstaking sound-by-sound decoding to smoother, automatic word recognition. Structured literacy instruction offers practical ways to bridge that gap. Below are three key strategies drawn from The Structured Literacy Playbook that help students like Sienna make this leap.

                                                                                                                                                  

1. Teach Rime Pattern Recognition

One of the largest and most consistent units in English words is the rime pattern—the vowel and any subsequent consonants within a syllable. For example, in sat the rime pattern is -at; the letters before the rime (called the onset in linguistics) are referred to as the “starter” throughout The Structured Literacy Playbook. 

Explicit instruction in rime patterns, sometimes referred to as analytic phonics, has been shown to be as effective for young readers as the sound-by-sound (synthetic) approach (National Reading Panel, 2000). It helps students develop sight word recognition because: 

  • It highlights a chunk of the word rather than a single letter.
  • It encourages students to read across the entire word (Kilpatrick, 2015). 
  • It supports the correct pronunciation of the vowel, which in English is governed by the letters following the vowel, not those preceding it. 

For example, the words bead, bed, and been all begin with “be” but differ in vowel pronunciation because of the letters that follow. When students focus on the rime, they can anticipate and produce the correct vowel sound more efficiently. Follow the script and practice below to teach your students rime pattern recognition.  

                                                                                                                                                  

2. Use Backward Decoding

Backward decoding supports partial orthographic mapping by having students read the rime pattern before the starter sound. While counterintuitive at first, reading words from back to front aligns with how the brain stores phonological information for word recognition.

Research suggests that humans store words in auditory memory using two major cues: the first sound and the rime pattern (Kilpatrick, 2015). When students read the rime first, they activate all the words in their memory with that same pattern, which boosts accuracy and speed.

For example, backward decoding the word went by first reading “-ent” activates a cluster of known words (bent, sent, tent, went). Adding the starter sound “w-” then helps Sienna pronounce and map the entire word correctly. This approach builds the foundation for automatic recognition instead of laborious decoding. 

                                                                                                                                                  

3. Incorporate RAN Charts for Automaticity

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) charts reinforce automatic word recognition and are a powerful predictor of reading fluency (Wolf & Denckla, 2005). A traditional RAN chart shows a random array of five different objects, letters, or numbers across rows, and the time it takes to name them correlates with overall reading rate.

While practicing traditional object, letter, or number RAN charts has limited academic value, populating RAN charts with frequently occurring words, rime patterns, or common phrases gives students the repetition and practice they need to develop quick, automatic word retrieval (Wolf et al., 2009).

If a student continues to decode word by word while working through a RAN chart, it may be time to revisit individual word reading and backward decoding activities before expecting fluency in connected text. 

                                                                                                                                                  

Pulling It All Together

For students like Sienna, the goal is not to abandon phonics but to move beyond sound-by-sound decoding to smoother, chunk-based recognition. Teaching rime patterns, practicing backward decoding, and using RAN charts populated with meaningful word patterns provide a powerful trio of strategies. When combined, these practices strengthen orthographic mapping, improve vowel pronunciation, and accelerate the shift toward automatic, fluent reading.

With consistent, structured support, students can make the leap from decoding every sound to reading with confidence and ease — an essential milestone on their journey to lifelong literacy. 

Want more winning strategies? Grab your copy of The Structured Literacy Playbook today!

Interested in reading more? Check out another blog post from Crafting Minds!

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