Why is it so wrong to encourage guessing for children who find decoding hard?
A. While it may appear to be the “easy way out” the tactic of guessing a word will eventually get the child in trouble. Skilled readers don’t guess words. They sometimes skip and skim, but there is no short-cut to “saying the sounds.” That’s what skilled readers do; they do it with automaticity and they slow down on unfamiliar words. This is what you want your child to learn how to do. Children try all kinds of “short cuts.” Some of these are adaptive; most short cuts aren’t. Guessing words is among the shortcuts that aren’t adaptive.
