My son has a habit of guessing what he thinks a word should be as soon as he sees the first letter or two. He gets very frustrated when I tell him he has read the word incorrectly. When I try to help him sound out the word, he continues to try sounding it out as the word he guessed. He gets so frustrated when he can’t make the word sound like what he wants it to be, he wants to give up. I’ve tried covering the pictures on the page so he can’t look at the picture and try to guess what the page will say. How can I stop the guessing game?

I see the “guessing” game all the time. It’s quite common, especially if he’s been working with sight words at all. Sight words are words that don’t make much phonetic sense, we just have to know what they are—like “sight.” We all have to memorize some sight words, that’s just part of our language. But if the majority of the words he’s reading are sight words and not phonetic words—this can be frustrating to a beginning reader. The problem seems to come when a child has memorized a word like “hat,” then every time he sees a word that starts with “h” and is followed by an “a,” his mind and eye remember the word “hat: and he reads “hat,” even if the word he’s reading is “had.” Having a really good phonetic foundation and good blending skills will help him feel confident to attack a new word letter by letter. Then have him slow down, sound out the word and he’ll be comfortable with his ability to sound out every letter in the word, not just the beginning letters that he remembers.

About him getting frustrated and mad about sounding out words? Well, that’s pretty common when you have to slow them down and correct them. Be patient and teach him patience—saying things like, “If the word is “had” then we have to read “had” not “hat”—otherwise the story won’t make sense.” With reading practice, he’ll get better at recognizing the difference in words and the “guessing” game will start to disappear. Just keep going—it sounds like you’re doing great.