When reading, and children come a word that they do not know, they need several strategies to help them solve the word. A typical response is usually, "I sound it out". However research shows that this strategy does no help children solve words about 50% of the time. Children need to know other strategies, so that they have several to try when one does not work. Listed below are some strategies to work with your child at home when reading. 1. Picture support:     Encourage children to use the pictures to help them solve a word. 2. Chunk (Look for a part of the word you know)      Going "Do you see a small word that you know?" 3. Patterns in words    (Think of a word you know that look like a word you are trying to solve.)     "You know the word at and that helps you figure out the word hat." 4. Guess and Check      Look at the first letter of the word, then guess a word. Then read the sentence to see if it makes sense.     "Look at the first letter and make a guess....were you right?" 5. Skip it, Read On      When a child is stuck, encourage them to skip that word and read on.         Sometime this helps the child to figure out what makes sense there and then go back and fix the sentence.       example:  Read ________ read 6. Get your mouth ready!     Remind children to get their mouth ready to say the next word. Sometime, this is all a child needs to read the correct word, because it just falls from their mouth. 7. Look the whole way through the word. Encourage children to look beyond the first letter of the word.