By now, I think all educators can agree that phonics instruction is key in teaching kids to read. Decoding strategiesshould be phonics-based to ensure kids focus on the print first, rather than pictures or context clues. This will help them later on when pictures disappear with more advanced text.
I’ve written about decoding strategies before and want to share one of my favorite ones with you- chunking words with the Chunky Monkey reading strategy.
Sounding a word out letter by letter is a helpful decoding strategy and an important stage in reading. Read here how I help kids with step-by-step decoding.
The next step is recognizing chunks and using them to help with decoding words. Reading chunks can not only help kids decode a word faster than sounding out letter by letter, but it can help them decode more accurately (ex: recognizing digraphs, vowel teams, silent e words).
The chunky monkey technique is a method that has been used for years to help children learn how to read. It’s based around the idea that certain letters in a word look similar, and if children can match them up correctly, it will help them to understand what a word means.
In order to do this, you need to find pictures of words with different letter combinations in them so that your students can practice matching them. For example, in this picture there are some simple words such as ‘go’, ‘cat’, and ‘dog’. These three examples would be easy enough to go through for your class. But, you could also use more challenging words. If you had a class with older children, you might show the sentences:
I have two cats. I have a cat.
This sentence is very hard to figure out, but you can see from the image below how each of those words looks like a little cartoon character.
WHAT IS A CHUNK?
A chunk is any part of a word made up of more than 1 letter. A chunk can be a small word inside a bigger one, a digraph or blend, vowel team, suffix, word family, etc.
WHY IS CHUNKING HELPFUL?
When chunking, kids are still paying attention to all of the letters in a word, which is important to orthographically map out the word and store it in memory. But with chunking, they are recognizing that some letters work together to make one sound or a group of sounds in a word. They are more likely to blend together a long word by chunking than sounding out letter by letter.
For example, sounding out the word checkingis made easier by recognizing the digraphs ch and ck and the suffix ing and reading those as parts rather than letter by letter.
Also, looking at several letters at a time is helpful because sometimes a vowel sound is dictated by the letter(s) that come after it. For example, in the word for, the o‘s sound will change because it’s followed by “bossy r” (r-controlled vowel). Similarly, the o sound in stone will change because of the silent e.
WAYS TO TEACH AND PRACTICE CHUNKING
Start with a story. For example, tell kids how you were in a rush the other day and climbed a flight of stairs 2 at a time. This helped you get to the top a bit faster. Although each step was necessary to get you there, you could put 2 together at a time to get there faster. This reminded you of chunking words. Each letter in a word is important but combining letters to recognize parts may help you decode a word faster.
Write the word mat on the board and remind kids that sounding out each letter is an effective decoding strategy. This method works for some words but it’s not the most effective for longer words. Write a longer word, such as sheep. Model sounding out letter by letter, then by recognizing (and circling) the digraph sh and the vowel team ee. Now, blend the word parts together to read accurately.
Repeat with a word like calledand point out that recognizing the suffix ed can help you by adding it to the base word. Recognizing the word chunk allcan also help kids know that the a won’t make its short a sound. Now, they simply blend the parts together to read the word.
After introducing how chunks help, you can practice in many ways!
Here are some of my favorite ways to practice this strategy and they’re all included in my chunky monkey strategy pack.
What Is the Chunky Monkey Reading Strategy?
This article will help you understand more about how to read books using the Chunking Monkey Method. This method can be used by anyone who wants to improve their skills as readers.
When people first start to learn how to read, they tend to use a lot of different strategies when they try to figure out what letters make up words. However, these methods are not very effective.
Instead, you should focus on one particular method that works well for everyone. The Chunking Monkey Method is a great way to increase your comprehension and vocabulary. It’s also a fun game to play with kids!
Here is a brief overview of the process:
1. Start off by selecting a book that you want to read.
2. Pick a word at random. You can choose any word in the text.
3. Now, break down that word into smaller chunks. For example, you could say “the” and then point to the letter ‘t’. That would mean that you were looking for the word ‘table’.
4. Continue doing this until you have found all of the individual pieces of information.
5. Once you’ve finished breaking up each piece of information, look back to see if it makes sense. If not, then go through the steps again.
Why Is It Important to Teach the Chunky Monkey Reading Strategy?
There’s no denying that learning how to read is a very important skill. If you’re a parent, then you know just how difficult it can be to get your children to learn this type of information. This is why teaching them the right way to read can make all of the difference in their lives.
It isn’t always easy to tell whether or not someone understands the basics of reading. When you look at a child who doesn’t understand the concept of letters, it can seem like they don’t care about anything. However, there are actually many reasons as to why they might have such a hard time with reading.
One of the most common causes for poor reading skills is dyslexia. Dyslexics may struggle to focus on certain parts of a sentence or paragraph. As a result, they’ll end up skipping over words or making mistakes. In addition, some people simply aren’t interested in learning how to read.
In order to help your kids succeed when they start school, you should try to teach them the correct method for reading. By doing this, you will give yourself and your family a better chance of success.