If you’ve watched your third grader read “pony” for “puppy” and wondered whether something’s wrong, you’re not imagining it. Guessing at words past first grade is a sign — a specific, nameable sign — that a child hasn’t been taught to decode.
This isn’t about being behind. It’s about being taught a strategy that doesn’t work. For twenty years, many American schools taught “three-cueing” — a method that encouraged kids to guess at words using pictures and context. The research on how children actually learn to read has always pointed somewhere else: systematic phonics and explicit instruction in how sounds map to letters.
If your child is still guessing, they didn’t miss the memo. They were given the wrong map.