Beyond "Sounding It Out"

I just finished reading Chapter 4 of Catching Readers, "Beyond Sounding It Out". It was truly one of the most informational and practical chapters I have read in my educational career up to this point. Especially in my field experience, I often struggle with the issue of what to do when the student is stuck on a word. As is common for many people, I often find myself saying, "Okay, let's sound it out." After reading this chapter I have realized that "sounding it out" is not the most beneficial way of making our students become life-long readers. Although the visual aspect (phonics) of making sure that the word we are saying looks like the word on the page is an important part of reading, there are other aspects that we need to help our students consider when reading.
Many times I have run into the situation where my student will look at the first few letters of the word, neglect the rest of the word, and make something up. I really liked the chapter's idea to respond to the student with a prompt such as, "Try that again and keep the story in your head as you do." (Catching Readers 59) It is so important for students to not only consider the visual aspect of the word, but also the meaning of what they are reading within the text.
Of course there are times when I have also run into a situation where my student does not pay careful enough attention to her use of letter/sound correspondence when reading. Other than just asking her to sound out the word again, you can ask the student if they are making up the word or actually looking at the page. Or, check that word again and see if it looks right to you. This is a great way to switch the responsibility of monitoring from the teacher to the student, which is the ultimate goal we are trying to reach when teaching our students to be good readers.
There were many other things that I got from this chapter that would take too much space to go into here, but if you haven't gotten a chance to read the chapter yet, I highly suggest it. It is so practical, and I really hope to use some of these suggestions in both my field experience and in my future classroom.