Decodable Readers to Support the Science of Reading

 As a primary teacher, I feel that one of my most important tasks is to teach students to be effective readers who also enjoy spending time reading.  Over my years of teaching, I have witnessed many children who seem to be able to learn how to read incidentally, but in my experience, I tend to usually have around 20% of my class who struggle to read in a significant way. In the swing towards "balanced literacy" I believe that many students have been left behind by a lack of systematic instruction.

My goal is to teach my whole class systematically, as that won't hurt those students who seem to learn "no matter what" and it will likely help my struggling students much more than any haphazard approach could do.  

I aim to provide systematic literacy instruction which allows for a deep understanding of the structure of language, while also fostering the joy of reading through quality interactive read-alouds and student-centered literacy activities. Students who CAN read will likely enjoy reading more, so it makes sense to give students all of the skills they need in order to become readers.

One of the changes that I have already made in my classroom is that I no longer prompt my students to guess a word based on the first letter, skip a word, or simply look at the picture in order to "discover" an unknown word. 

In the past, I used beanie baby reading posters, some of which encouraged habits that poor readers use as compensation strategies. They were Eagle Eye, Lips the Fish, Skippy Frog, and so on.  The first article that I read that alerted me to the fact that these are misguided prompts, was the Emily Hanford article entitled "At a Loss for Words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers"

Now my focus is on keeping students' eyes on the print and empowering them with the phonics knowledge they need in order to decode unknown words. 

Decodable Books  

A fantastic way to ensure that students are practicing the phonics skills that they are taught is to follow up phonics lessons with decodable text.  This can be done via decodable sentences or decodable books.  

I have created some decodable texts that follow the phonics sequence that I use in my class, which basically follows Wiley Blevin's order of introducing letters in Kindergarten as described in his book "A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2: Common Causes of Failure and 7 Ingredients for Success." 

I created these books by very carefully choosing words that using a systematically increasing bank of consonants and short vowels.  For example, in the first book, only the letters m, a, s, p, & t are used.  Each subsequent book either uses a review of previously introduced letters or adds 1 or 2 new letters.  (5/20 books introduce 2 new letters, the rest only introduce 1 new letter).  This allows the students to solidify their learning and build confidence as they progress.

Set 1: Book 4: Tam Can Pass

Set 4: Book 17: Jack and Jill

These books are created in black and white for easy copying.  You can use them as books to use with the whole class, in small groups, or to reinforce learning as home reading books. Students can color the books if you choose, or they can be re-used year after year.  

 

I very carefully selected high-frequency words that would allow the stories to have enjoyable plots, while not overwhelming the reader with words that they could not decode.  

You can see the overall scope of the books by viewing the Bundle preview here. 

I have truly been overwhelmed by the joy that some of my students have had when they have been presented with decodable books that THEY CAN READ!  They are building confidence to know that they possess the skills to decode the words themselves.  They aren't looking to me, to the pictures (or to the ceiling!) to try to figure out the words.  I truly feel that I have reached a turning point in my teaching career!  

Since this image was first uploaded I have created different heart word cards. They can be found here. 

If you are new to the Science of Reading, I encourage you to read Wiley Blevins and Emily Hanford to start! 

Comment below...where are you on your journey as a reading teacher?  What questions do you have?