Question

Which of the following actions by elementary school teachers in the early grades would best demonstrate an understanding that decoding and encoding are reciprocal skills that develop synchronously during the early stages of reading development?

a) Focusing solely on decoding skills
b) Ignoring decoding skills and emphasizing encoding
c) Integrating both decoding and encoding activities
d) Postponing decoding and encoding until later grades

Answer 1

Elementary school teachers best demonstrate an understanding of synchronous development of decoding and encoding by integrating both activities in their literacy instruction, reinforcing the connection between reading and writing.

Step-by-step explanation:

The best action elementary school teachers can take to demonstrate an understanding that decoding and encoding are reciprocal skills that develop synchronously in early reading development is by integrating both decoding and encoding activities in their teaching practices.

Decoding involves translating text to speech by breaking down words into phonemes and blending them to read aloud, while encoding is essentially the opposite process—spelling words by segmenting spoken words into phonemes. By engaging students in both processes simultaneously, teachers can reinforce the connection between spoken and written language, facilitating better literacy skills. For example, a teacher might pair the reading of a simple story (decoding) with a spelling or writing activity that uses words from the text (encoding).

Such an integrated approach recognizes that literacy development is a dynamic interplay between these skills, and it allows students to understand the relationship between the words they encounter in text and how they use them in their own writing.