Don't let those hard words get you down! Find a short passage or use the book your student/child is reading and highlight the words that they don't know as they go. Use a reading strategy ring to help determine the best strategies to decode. Students love using the highlighter tape, so that makes them more invested in this activity!

Today we read leveled text and carefully monitored our thinking as we went!  With this close read, we found evidence to support our answers and opinions.  We usually do word hunts and circled key graphemes within words.  Yesterday, one of our groups reviewed r-controlled vowels and vowel digraphs (a.k.a. vowel teams), then searched for them in  our text.  Afterwards, they made a list of those graphemes/words on the back or use those highlighted words in sentences we create to help us internalize those graphemes.  Keeping the text short and on the easier side helps students cement this skill before they move on to more challenging text.  Go ahead and give it a try!