Decoding Skills Leap Six Grade Levels

When he was in 9th grade, Jarquise Wallace’s grades declined and an informal assessment supported that he had not learned to decode. Jarquise was given instruction in the SIM Word Identification Strategy. He was very motivated to learn to read and worked hard to learn to DISSECT words.

When he began, his instructional reading was at the 2nd grade level when decoding, but he quickly moved his instructional reading to the 5th grade level when decoding. At the end of the school year, he was decoding at the 8th grade level.

As his skills increased in using the Word Identification Strategy, his fluency increased and comprehension skills increased. He started reading with expression, which was not something that we had targeted in the intervention. As his success grew, he needed less adult support when using the strategy. We then moved to reading a novel for his English class to support him in generalizing the skill to other classes.

Jarquise has goals of becoming a PE teacher and a coach. I believe it is a possible dream.

Kris Taphorn
Special Education Consultant
Storm Lake, IA

I moved into the Storm Lake Community School District when I entered 4th grade. Reading did not go so good at my previous school. We did not work on reading in school. They just gave us a book to read and write about. We got the book in a bag and took the book home to read it. I did not learn how to take words apart. When I moved to Storm Lake I barely knew how to read. I did not have a clue how to take words apart. I learned by listening to teachers teach. When I was in 10th grade I learned how to use the SIM strategy of Word Identification in the spring. It helped me sound words faster and I read quicker. I use the strategy in English, Math, and Social Studies. I now learn by reading.

~Jarquise Wallace