Connecting a specific sound to a specific letter is the first step of the process of decoding. Encoding, on the other hand, is the reverse process, where students are asked to use the sound/symbol relationship of letters to form words.
Encoding is a difficult task for many of my students. Students need to be able to segment sounds, visualize a letter or letters to the sound they hear, and then write the letter they hear. Daily practice of this skill is necessary for mastery.
Backstory of the video clip: The student in this clip is a 2nd grader. She has passed her 2nd grade reading benchmarks. As the text becomes more complex, she has been successfully learning decoding strategies to break words into syllables. However, for all of her gains in decoding, she is challenged by the process on encoding.
In this clip, you will see the student being introduced to the text using encoding strategies. Notice, the words chosen were phonetically correct given her level of skill.
For more information on encoding and writing:
