Five Tips for Decoding
In the journey of learning to read, developing strong word decoding skills is one of the most critical steps. Decoding is foundational for reading fluency, comprehension, and long-term academic success. Without this skill, young readers may struggle to read words accurately and access meaning from print, leading to frustration and gaps in literacy development. Decoding can be developed explicitly and systematically, with components grounded in the science of reading, such as phonological awareness, symbol imagery, phonics, and orthographic mapping.
Seeing Stars®: Symbol Imagery for Phonological and Orthographic Processing in Reading and Spelling, by Nanci Bell, provides an effective, research-based approach to strengthening decoding abilities. This program uniquely integrates symbol imagery—the ability to visualize letters and sounds in the mind's eye—with direct instruction in phonological and orthographic skills. Here’s why decoding is so essential, and how the Seeing Stars program supports it through strategic instruction and targeted activities.
Why Word Decoding Matters
Word decoding is more than just sounding out unfamiliar words. It involves:
- Phonemic awareness – recognizing and manipulating the individual sounds in words.
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Phonics – teaching that words are made up of individual phonemes (sounds) connected to graphemes (letters).
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Symbol imagery – visualizing letters and letter patterns to strengthen phonemic awareness, sight word memory, and automaticity.
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Orthographic mapping – linking letters and sounds in words, following the conventions of spelling patterns in a given written language.
- Fluency and comprehension – recognizing words quickly and accurately, freeing mental resources for comprehension.
When these elements are in place, readers can independently tackle new words, self-correct, and build a sight word vocabulary that is rooted in phonological and orthographic processing, not just rote memorization.
How the Seeing Stars® Program Builds Decoding Skills
The Seeing Stars program focuses on developing symbol imagery, a skill often underemphasized in traditional reading instruction, along with phonemic awareness. Symbol imagery helps students visualize and recall the sequence of letters in a word, making decoding and spelling more efficient and automatic.
Key strategies and skills taught in Seeing Stars include:
- Symbol (mental) imagery exercises, where students visualize, decode, spell, and manipulate from a given letter pattern to stimulate orthographic memory;
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Air-writing, a multisensory technique that creates a shadow effect for letter patterns, which aids mental imagery;
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Controlled decoding practice using simple to complex syllables, multisyllabic words, and prefixes and suffixes to build decoding systematically, and
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Socratic method – immediate instructor feedback that helps students analyze their response for self-correction and independence.
This structured, cumulative approach to developing symbol imagery is effective for all students, and particularly for students with language-based learning difficulties.
Decoding Practice and Tips
The Seeing Stars Decoding Workbooks offer a wide range of structured activities. The goal is to develop decoding skills and stimulate symbol imagery as a primary sensory-cognitive function necessary for monitoring, self-correction, and fluency in reading and spelling tasks. Activities provide multiple opportunities for lots of word decoding, sight word practice, spelling, and text reading. Build your students’ skills with the following:
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Decode, Decode, Decode – Each lesson includes 20 words, starting from simple syllables and moving to complex syllables. Word lists include real and nonwords, with emphasis on phonetics and blending. Common syllable types and orthographic patterns (e.g., Final e, open/closed syllables) are introduced.
Tip: At times, use the word to stimulate symbol imagery. For example, “Read the word. Now cover it and air-write it. What is the fourth letter you picture? Change the second letter to an ‘i’ and tell me what the word would say now.”
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Spelling – Each lesson extends to spelling to practice the same complexity level and syllable types used in the decoding word list.
Tip: Focus on challenge words for students, such as unstable sounds and letters.
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Star Words – Practice high-frequency words with the goal of developing a sight word vocabulary for automatic word recognition.
Tip: Stimulate symbol imagery for irregular spelling patterns (e.g., have, been, of, is) so the irregularity can be stored in orthographic memory.
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Text Fluency and Comprehension – Short sentences are decoded for fluency practice and comprehension. Text includes both highly decodable and irregular words.
Tip: To aid in comprehension, prompt students to create a mental picture for the sentence. Have your student tell you what he visualizes for the story: “What did those words make you picture?”
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Writing – Students practice writing a given sentence, following the same complexity level and syllable patterns used for decoding and spelling lists. One or two Star Words are included for additional exposure to high-frequency words.
Tip: For an additional challenge, have the student add to the story and write another sentence or two.
These workbook activities reinforce the concept that reading is a cognitive, multisensory process. By integrating auditory, visual, and language modalities, the Seeing Stars program helps students become global readers, with fluency and comprehension.
Learn about Seeing Stars' unique approach to develop decoding and phonics skills
Decoding is not just an early reading skill—it is the foundation upon which all reading success is built. The Seeing Stars program offers a powerful and comprehensive method for strengthening decoding through phonological and orthographic processing. With the targeted exercises found in the Seeing Stars Decoding Workbooks, students of all abilities can build the decoding strength needed for fluent, confident reading.