Glossary · Letters, phonics and word reading
What is decoding?
Definition
Decoding is reading an unfamiliar printed word by working out the sound for each grapheme and blending them into a spoken word.
It is the student's way into any word they haven't stored yet. Early on, decoding is slow and deliberate: look, say each sound, blend, check that it's a real word. With practice the steps speed up and blur together.
Decoding grows past single letters. Older students decode in bigger units, such as syllables, prefixes and suffixes, but the idea is the same: use the parts of the word to work out how it sounds, rather than guessing from the picture or the first letter.
Skilled readers still decode. When you meet an unfamiliar name or a medical term, you sound it out in chunks. Students need a reliable method for those moments, at every age.
In a lesson
A student meets bandit in a story. They split it into ban and dit, read each part, and put them together. Then they check: “Bandit. That's a robber. That makes sense.”
Examples
Each word with its spelling units, one per sound.
- shrimpsh·r·i·m·p
- trumpett·r·u·m·p·e·t
- artistar·t·i·s·t
Words come from our lexicon, checked against a pronouncing dictionary. Words a student sees in our assessments are left out.
Why does this matter for the record?
Record decoding by pattern, not just overall. “Decodes closed syllables, not yet vowel teams” is a line a reader of the record can act on.
Rate each skill as you teach it
Needs support, Developing, Secure. The rating schedules the review and builds the report.