A U.S. expert panel discourages letting children guess unfamiliar words from the first letters or the pictures, because guessing will not work with harder texts. A national review in England said beginners taught to lean on pictures are far less likely to use their phonics on the print.
The review describes the "three-cueing" approach as one where beginners use meaning, grammar and letter-sound cues together to form a guess about a word.
In the source’s own words“beginning readers use semantic, syntactic, and “graphophonic” (letter-sound) cues simultaneously to formulate an intelligent hypothesis about a word’s identity”
The panel discourages letting children guess unfamiliar words, because guessing will not work with harder texts.
In the source’s own words“The panel discourages teachers from allowing students to use guessing strategies to identify unfamiliar words, because these will not be effective with more-advanced texts.”
The panel names guessing from the first letters or from the pictures as habits to discourage.
In the source’s own words“For example, discourage students from guessing unknown words using beginning letters or pictures.”
The panel also cautions adults against giving riddle-like hints that lead a child to guess the word.
In the source’s own words“The panel also cautions against giving hints that encourage students to guess a word as if answering a riddle”
The Rose Review said beginners who are taught as a habit to work out the word from the picture are far less likely to use their phonics on the print.
In the source’s own words“where beginner readers are taught habitually to infer the word they need from pictures they are far less likely to apply their developing phonic knowledge and skills to print.”
The Rose Review said skilled readers do not depend on such strategies to read words, because they can already recognize words.
In the source’s own words“skilled readers do not rely upon strategies to read words, as they have already developed the skill of word recognition.”
The appendix to the Rose Review reports that children with weaker word reading lean on context more than children with good word reading.
In the source’s own words“Children with poorer word recognition skills show larger facilitatory effects of context on word recognition than children with good word recognition skills”
We read each of these ourselves on October 9, 2026. Follow the links to read them too.
“Guesses words from the first letter or the picture, or “reads” books from memory”
Look at Every Letter is a full 10-day plan, with a short video that shows you every step. The goal: on day 10 your child looks at every letter before saying a word, and reads words and sentences never seen before, with no picture to help. It is the goal, not a promise.
