STRATEGY - Syllabication

NAME: Stephen Nelson

CONTENT AREA: English Language Arts

GROUP SIZE: 1

RATIONALE: The student struggles with reading, and breaking down the word into more manageable
syllables can help with both pronunciation and comprehension.

STEPS OF STRATEGY: If a student is struggling with decoding a word, the teacher will divide the
word into syllables. This helps the student break down the word into manageable chunks, saying each
syllable before putting them back together into a polysyllabic word.

ACCOMMODATIONS/MODIFICATIONS: Nothing is needed for accommodations or modifications

at the strategy’s base level. Words can be easily divided with pencil lines on the page. However, one
accommodation that could be made would be to use flashcards with the words written normally on one
side and already split into syllables on the other.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: This strategy is the bread and butter of what my cooperating special ed
teacher and I have been doing with the fourth graders who struggle with reading and writing. Oftentimes
we want to make learning “fun,” but the students this year are so behind that we need to build a
foundation first. For most of the students, including the one with whom I used this strategy, we’ve seen
improvement by leaps and bounds, with a couple of them already moving up whole grade levels in terms
of their reading ability.