How to figure out those unknown words:

Here is what we do when we (child and teacher) come to an unknown word.

1. Run your finger under it as you say it slowly and think about the story.

Here the child tries to say the sounds of the letter he sees, stretching them a bit to try to blend them together. He may not say the sounds exactly as they sound in that word. But if he is thinking about the story at the same time a word that makes sense should be triggered.

If the child tries to punch out the sounds too vigorously, they will not hear them blended into a word. Then the teacher models how she stretches the sounds so they sound connected.

If this really fails to help them come to a word that makes sense and looks like the word, most often the child has lost the thread of the story. When that happens, we need to remind them to think about the story. We can remind them of what is happening and have them think about something in the story that will trigger the missing word. For example, if the word is "down" you might ask "Which way did they look?"