The Strategy Hand

Strategy Corner

The Strategy Hand is something we have used with out first graders to help them have something to use for problem solving in reading. Each finger has a strategy that a child is encouraged to try, to figure out a new or unfamiliar word.

The first strategy is, “get your mouth ready.” It tells a child to look at the word, see the first letter and get your mouth ready to say the sound that letter makes.

The second strategy is, “stretch the sounds out.” This encourages the child to say the sounds slowly, in sequence, to put them together and make a word.

The third strategy is “reread-read on.” Pictures of arrows accompany reread and read on. They tell the child that rereading up to the tricky word, or reading on and skipping the word, might help to figure it out.

The fourth strategy is “look for chunks of sounds.” These chunks might include the ing ending, digraphs, or bases that the child knows from other words. Hopefully, the child is beginning to make bridges from something he or she knows to something new.

The last strategy is a cross-checking strategy. The child is asked to think, “does it look right?” and “does it sound right?” If it doesn’t do both, the child needs to try something else.

By Jo Schreck & Leann Van Dyke, Manchester First Grade Teachers, Eastern Iowa Reading Council
Iowa Reading Association Newsletter, Feb/Mar 2002
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