At last, we reach our final strategy in our reading strategy series.

I think we’ve pretty much covered all the bases when it comes to problems your child may encounter when decoding a word.  All except for our last friend, Tryin’ Lion.

I wish I had some cutesty story to introduce him, but I’m all out my friends.  However, don’t let that undermine this guy’s important.  As you’ll see, he plays a pivotal role in our collection of reading strategies.

Who is Tryin’ Lion?

Tryin’ Lion is our last resort, fail safe strategy. He is the strategy children default to when they are getting frustrated.

Tryin’ Lion is the culmination of all of these strategies. He encourages kids to keep on trying and use all their strategies to figure out an unknown word and try it again.

Part of the Tryin’ Lion strategy is having kids just try to substitute a word for the unknown word using context clues. While we do use it this way, I’ve also modified it as my other strategies are specifically geared towards context clues. My purpose for this strategy is making sure we have exhausted all other strategies before asking for help.

I encourage children to ask themselves a number of questions before using this strategy.

• Are there any picture clues?
• What is the beginning sound?
• Do you recognize any parts of the word?
• Have you tried flipping the vowel sounds?
• Does it make sense?

As a very last resort, any good Lion knows he can ask for help from his pride. If a child has answered all of the questions and still can’t figure out, there’s nothing wrong with a little guidance.

You can grab my Tryin’ Lion poster here or by clicking on the image below.

Why is it important?

Struggling to read as a beginning reader can be very frustrating. Frustration can lead to students burning out, or giving up, which is something we as parents and teachers never want to see happen. This is exactly why I use Tryin’ Lion as a failsafe strategy, meaning when nothing else works, they are allowed to ask for help.

How to introduce it

When my daughter was a baby she got a cute little lion as a gift at a baby shower.  He stayed in her room on a shelf for years until the dog discovered him and tried to make him a chew toy.  We rescued him but he looked a little worse for the wear.  I was getting ready to donate him, but it occured to me  he had the perfect place in my home as our Tryin’ Lion mascot!

When introducing the strategy we talk about how lion’s are social animals who live in a pride. We equate their pride to our classroom, or at home, to our family. I stress to them that a pride all works together towards a goal, like hunting, for the benefit of all members. Much like we are all working together towards goal of learning to read.

I also remind them that pride can have another meaning in that we can also take pride in our accomplishments, but should never have too much pride to ask for help.

To practice, I then give them a few sentences or pages that I anticipate them to struggle with and we work through it trying different strategies. This varies from child to child depending on reading ability. However, after working with your child, you should be able to easily predict what sentences may stump them.

The goal is to have them ultimately come to a word that they cannot decode, no matter how hard they try. At which point it is important to reiterate that sometimes, but rarely, they make just need to ask for help.

How to practice it

This strategy is unique in that I don’t have specific activities to practice it. Other than purposely giving a child text which may be challenging, there’s not much to be done. This strategy occurs organically, and is hard to replicate. Therefore, there is no better practice than just plain on reading.

Be sure your child is reading a leveled book that is just right for them. It should have words that challenge them and not be something they can pick up and immediately read fluently. Continue to also practice modeling strategies while reading aloud. Perhaps when doing your own reading, if you encounter a difficult word, model your own process for decoding it, even asking another adult if necessary. It helps children to see the adults in their life don’t “know it all” and gives them the confidence to make their own mistakes.

Recommended Books

Below are some of my favorite books to use while teaching this strategy. Don’t forget to check out Amazon’s used books. You can sometimes score some awesome deals that way.

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If you’ve missed any of the previous strategies, you can find them here. If you’re looking for my sight word series, letter of the week curriculum or print concepts and reading behaviors post, be sure to check out my Teach page!

And don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest, where I’m pinning all kinds of great ideas for instruction!