With beginner readers in my class, I use Decodable books as they play an important role in phonics instruction and building confidence in young readers. Learn more about decodable books, how they differ from predictable texts, and how to select high-quality texts that align with the scope and sequence of your phonics program.
Decodable books are simple books that are written for the beginning reader and contain the specific grapheme–phoneme correspondences students have learned. This provides learners with the opportunity to use their developing segmenting and blending skills to read words in order to develop automaticity, or the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly and experience independent reading success.
Decodable books encourage children to sound out words using decoding strategies rather than guessing from pictures or predicting from other cues. They can be introduced once beginning readers have learned some simple grapheme–phoneme correspondences and can blend from left to right.
All books and texts are ‘decodable’ in the sense that they can be read, but only if the reader has sufficient reading ability for the complexity of the text.
For beginning readers, the only books that are truly decodable are those that contain the alphabetic code they have learned.
The type of reading material we first give to students sets their ‘reading reflex’. The habit of using knowledge of letter–sound relationships as the first strategy for reading unfamiliar words. Decodable readers that enable students to ‘sound out,’ rather than guess. Unknown words develop this reflex and lead to more successful independent reading. Mesmer (2005) found that children were more likely to apply their phonics knowledge, read more accurately, and needed less assistance when reading decodable books.
Of course, decodable texts are not the only texts to be included in the beginning reader’s diet. Teachers and parents should read high-quality children’s literature that contains more complex vocabulary and sentence structures with students every day. This gives children the opportunity to hear good reading models, as well as develop the vocabulary and syntax that will support their reading development.
Decodable vs. Predictable text
Decodable texts are different to predictable or repetitive texts. Predictable texts are early readers that contain repetitive words and sentences. Predictable texts have their foundations in the three cueing systems model of reading. The three cueing models have significant disadvantages for weak or at risk readers.
Predictable texts have been designed so that beginning readers have to rely heavily on contextual guessing to read many of the words that are on the page. They contain more complex words with grapheme–phoneme correspondences that the students have not been taught.What’s wrong with predictable or repetitive texts?
Speech and language pathologist Alison Clarke explains the problems with repetitive text and how they compare to decodable texts. To adults, predictable texts look very simple, but let’s take a look at them from a child’s perspective.
Early readers should contain only one sentence per page. Only then progress to more text as the readers gain more experience. When I teach my students ‘tricky’ words I first discuss and decode them. I also use Elkonin Boxes with beginning readers prior to reading the text to minimize potential confusion. That way I am able to minimize the use of tricky words! Early readers now decoding using phonic knowledge rather than guessing words in context.
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