Help students with their reading skills by teaching them to read "chunks" of letters instead of one letter at a time. If they can decode one word family, they can decode many other words. After you teach them the sounds specific word families make, ask them to come up with words from a certain word family. For example, if you are teaching "at," instruct them to place different consonants in front of the word family to make words such as "cat," "bat," "sat" and "hat."
Teach students to use context clues by covering up an unknown word in a sentence. Ask them to read a sentence, skipping the word you cover. For example, if you cover the word "ate" in the sentence, "Mary ate an extra helping of meatloaf last night," instruct them to figure out the covered up word using context clues. If they can't figure it out, tell them the first letter of the word as a clue.
Teach students to decode various compound words by breaking them in half. For example, if they recognize the first part of "keyboard" but don't recognize the second part, cover up "key."
Help students sound out unfamiliar words by encouraging them to blend sounds together. Write a word on the board with a dash between between each letter, such as "r-a-t." Instruct them to pronounce one letter at a time. After they sound each letter successfully, ask them to blend the letters together to make a word.