Decoding Skills: 14 Essential Resources to Improve Them!

14 Great Resources to Improve Decoding Skills!

Let’s improve decoding skills starting today! Yes, we know it is the summer break, but there’s really no better time to re-engage kids in literacy & learning—while having fun at the same time! They’ll be retaining and practicing established decoding skills and preparing early for the coming school year.

This special post will not only provide you with information about decoding, but it will also include excellent excellent decoding resources, too. You’ll discover a FREE lesson plan for teaching children how to decode new words that are unfamiliar to them AND you’ll also find two FREE versions of a decoding worksheet for students in two different grade ranges: Pre-K through Primary Students (PreK-Gr. 3) AND Intermediate Students (Gr. 4-6).

Goal: You can help students become stronger word detectives by practicing how to break apart and read unfamiliar words.

Table of Contents

The Basics: Phonics and Decoding

What IS decoding? Phonics instruction teaches the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. To read, children need to understand the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language. Decoding is the skill of using letter-sound relationships to translate a printed word into speech.

It is important for emergent readers to learn that there are predictable relationships between sounds and letters. This allows children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words. As a result, young readers will begin to read with some degree of fluency.

Children are taught, for example, that the letter n represents the sound /n/, and that it is the first letter in words such as nose, nice and, new. When children understand letter-sound relationships, they can sound out and read (decode) new words effectively.

Let’s Focus on Decoding Skills

When an emergent reader learns about decoding, there will be some common phrases that will accompany their instruction. These common terms will likely be phonics, phonemic awareness, phonemes, segmenting, and blending. More experienced readers might also encounter concepts like symbol imagery and concept imagery, since connecting mental images with letters and words helps students retain information.

There is a wide variety of decoding resources and strategies available online, and many are FREE yet effective, too. Here are just a few decoding resources:

Decoding Strategies Poster by We Are Teachers
Printable Alphabet Cards at PreKinders
Musical Plates by Just Cara Carroll
Decoding Strategies for PARENTS & more! by Finally in First Blog
Decoding Multisyllabic Words by Lucky Little Learners
The Reading Focus Cards – Tools for Decoding & More – from Brennan Innovators, LLC

More FREE Decoding Resources for You

To make things even easier for you, we are including with this post 3 additional goodies to enable you to immediately begin this decoding skills improvement.

First, there is a FREE, ready-to-use Decoding Lesson Plan for teachers or homeschooling families. It is a step-by-step guide to use with children from Pre-K to Gr. 6.

Secondly, there is also a companion worksheet you can print when needed to allow children to practice and improve their ability to decode words that are new or unfamiliar. This worksheet is also FREE and available to download as needed. There are 2 versions of the worksheet — 1 for Pre-K to Gr. 3 students and 1 for Intermediate Students in Gr. 4-6. Be sure to download and print the appropriate version for your child(ren) or students (resources included in “Extra Goodies” section at the end of this article).

Finally, even though this article is intended for summer skill building, all the decoding tools, strategies, and resources in this post will be appropriate for use throughout the year to help kids in Pre-K through Gr. 6 further develop and improve their all-important decoding skills!

More Decoding Resources

Slide Deck: 6-Step Lesson Plan for Decoding, Spelling & Fluency– by H. Beverine-Curry, PhD, Chief Academic Officer, Ohio Dept. of Education, Literacy Academy – June 2023

The Science of Reading: a Phonics Lesson Plan Template for Small Groups – by By Alanna (Lani) Mednick, Implementation Manager, CORE Learning

6 Effective Decoding Strategies For Beginning and Struggling Readers – by Delilah Orpi, THRIVE Literacy Corner

17 Effective Decoding Strategies and Activities for Emerging Readers – by WeAreTeachers

Basics: Phonics and Decoding– by Reading Rockets