 
 
Jump to Free Decoding Printables This work in progress is dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Alice Garside. I was trained by Mrs. Garside in the Orton-Gillingham method in the early 70s. I wrote my first story for her. It was written in pencil on 3x5 inch note cards. My assignment was to use a controlled vocabulary with minimal sight words, short vowels, or, ar, and the digraphs: ch, th, sh. My story was about a dog who had a pork chop for lunch. When I read it to our training class, Mrs. Garside had a look of delight on her face. This look of delight was one I had never seen in an adult's face before - not a parent or teacher, nor family friend. It warmed my heart and filled me with confidence. It made me feel that I had done something special. I never forgot this look and it has inspired me to stick with my work with children with Dyslexia throughout the years. DECODING PRACTICE SHEETS - Free Decodables  Over the years I have worked with many children who have learning disabilities and dyslexia. For many of these children very structured practice based on the Orton-Gillingham Method is needed for them to learn to decode. In my classroom, I purchase and use the Merrill Linguistic Readers, explodethecode.com subscriptions, components of the Wilson program, Read Naturally (a fluency program), and I also make up structured slow-paced decoding sheets that can be practiced in the classroom and sent home. Here is a set that goes along with my spelling lists. Please feel free to print and use these with your children. In my training, I was taught to start with letter/sound cards (phoneme work), then to build the letters into words. We would move the letter cards around to build the words, or we would use magnetic letters, or actually write the letters on blocks. The basic idea was for children to think of the phonemes (sounds) as separate units which must be blended together). Mrs. Garside mentioned work being done in Russia by Elkonin. The work involved children placing blocks (consonant and vowel - color-coded blocks) in rhythm with saying the sounds of a word. Thus my work with children over the years has often used color-coding for the vowels and consonants. It has always used "sounding out". Next we would do a dictation. Children would write letters, words, and sentences. Finally, the children would read sentences and stories. Each lesson would end with a game.
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