Word Attack Strategies

Word attack strategies help students pronounce and understand unknown words. Decoding is the most common strategy that students use, but many words in the English language are difficult to decode. Students who are learning to read need to have multiple strategies to help them read unknown words, e.g., using picture clues; asking what makes sense; sounding out the word starting with the first letter; looking for chunks of the word they already know; reading past the unknown word and looking for more clues.