Sounding Out

This weeks article was something that really got me thinking.  I can remember being told to sound things out in school.  I can remember my parents telling me to sound out words that I could not pronounce.  Even now, when I am in the school I am always telling children to sound words out.  This article made me wonder if I am hurting them in the long run. I often wonder if it makes things more difficult for children to understand if they are esentially too young to sound something out.  Maybe they do not have the phonemic awareness to make out all of the letter sounds.  I think that some children have a hard time listening to all of the sounds that a letter can make.  Some letters have a short and a long sound to the words.  It can be really hard for a child to know which one they should be using at this time in the word. I do not think that it is bad to tell a child to sound out a word but I think that we, as teachers, need to know what the child is capable of doing at such a young age and making sure to not ask them to do something that they may not be able to handle.