In Corrective Reading Decoding, our approach to reading instruction emphasizes systematic and explicit phonics instruction that discourages memorization of whole words and guessing at words in context. We embed phonics instruction within full lessons, systematically teach letter-sound correspondences, and introduce a combination of vowels and consonants early in the instructional sequence. We explicitly teach and practice segmenting and blending, use decoding strategies for high-frequency words with regularly spelled sound-symbol correspondences, and provide frequent opportunities for word-level decoding practice and review. Our early texts are predominantly decodable, and we continue phonics instruction beyond single-syllable patterns to include multisyllabic word decoding strategies and morphology to support word recognition.

The fluency instruction prioritizes student oral reading, with equal emphasis on rate, accuracy, and expression. We go beyond connected text-reading fluency by providing word-level automaticity during the word attack portion of the lessons. In our fluency assessments, we do not accept incorrectly decoded words, even if they are close in meaning to the target word. This ensures a comprehensive evaluation of fluency skills.