Talk About Word Meanings During Phonics

Effective phonics teaching always includes talking about a word’s meaning right alongside learning about its letters and sounds, so that children know what the letters and sounds represent.

Why is this important? When we teach decoding it is easy to focus on the letters and sounds to read words, as it should be! What we often overlook is that part of our explicit teaching includes word meaning. Students often become so focused on decoding that they do not realize they are decoding real words that have meaning and can be used in sentences. And we as teachers often assume that students realize that these words they read are meaningful. Therefore, it can be super helpful to include some brief attention to word meaning throughout a decoding lesson.

Without meaning, the word sloth is just the sounds /s/, /l/, /ŏ/, and /th/. Children need to learn it is a small, slow mammal that lives in trees.

As you watch, think about:

• Which words does Ms. Knowles use as examples of the ‘-tch’ phonics pattern?
• How does Ms. Knowles help her students learn the meaning of the example word hatch?
• How is this lesson similar or different from your own work to talk about word meaning with your children during phonics lessons?

How To Talk About  Word Meaning

Teachers can briefly attend to meaning by modeling the use of a decoded word in meaningful ways. Here are some examples:

1. Model Words with Sentences
2. Play the Riddle Game
3. Build-a-Sentence

1. Model Words with Sentences 

Model the use of two or three words from the lesson in sentences. 

Here is an example with the lesson word match. Match is a perfect word to model meaning because it has multiple meanings. 

After students read the word match, say, 

Your socks do not match today. One is blue and the other is yellow!

I will strike a match to start the campfire.

Match. Read the word?

And then students again read the word match.

Plan to model sentences for two or three new or multiple meaning words during the lesson. 

2. Play the Riddle Game

With this strategy, you’ll use simple, puzzle-like questions that prompt students to think about word meaning in order to figure out the correct answer.

Play the riddle game. Students have their list of words to decode from a lesson written on slips of paper in front of them. 

Here's an example with tail.

Say,

I'm thinking of a word that is a dog's body part. It moves whenever the dog is happy. What is it? 

Students will know the word but need to read it to find it, and then hold it up. 

TAIL!

Do this for several of the words. Make sure the students say the word as they read it. (You can double the instruction process by asking students to write the words themselves from dictation which will provide good spelling practice.)

The object of the Riddle Game is not for the students to guess the right word, but to locate the answer among the group of words and read it! We want them to associate the visual of the word with its meaning.

3. Build-a-Sentence

Ask students to place their word strips upside down in front of them, pick up a word, read it and then use it in a sentence to share with a partner or the small group. Teachers may need to model the use of a word, or provide support to use the word appropriately within a sentence. If this is the case, ask the student to repeat the sentence correctly following your support.

On the next page you'll dig deeper into learning how to talk about word meaning by applying one of the above strategies to a phonics lesson plan.