“All three ways of learning to read are essential,” says Kathy. Semantics (meaning) and structural analysis help the students identify the wordÂ hat phonics (letter-sound associations) help them learn to recognizeÂ hat, heÂ andÂ his. Kathy is taking advantage of a shared reading session to teach her students a lesson in decoding, the process of identifying the written form of a spoken word. Can you hear that they begin with the same sound?” Good! That word isÂ his, and it begins withÂ h. “Does anyone see another word that begins withÂ h? Keesha, come and point to the word. “Yes, and what letter doesÂ hatÂ begin with?” Kathy asks. “It’s in the picture,” one student answers. “Who can tell me the next word?” Four voices shout, “Hat!”

Pointing to each word, she reads, “…and he pulled the rabbit out of his…” She pauses and asks, Kathy Chen sits with a Big Book propped on one knee and seven of her first graders clustered on the floor in front of her.

Structural analysis examples in reading