As early readers gain an understanding and mastery of alphabet letters and the corresponding sounds, texts they read must provide practice decoding to solidify and map the sound-to-spelling relationships into their long-term memory. Texts that are decodable to the reader provide these opportunities for authentic reading.
Predictable vs Decodable Text
Predictable, or patterned text are the first books in most levelled texts series. These books include repeated phrases, with slight changes in wording from page to page, high-frequency words, and heavy support from illustrations. Predictable texts are designed to draw the reader's attention to the illustrations or to rely on a predictable pattern to solve the words. Emergent readers must guess words based on the picture cues or pattern to “read”, however, they are not actually reading words nor doing the necessary decoding work to orthographically map letters and letter patterns to become better readers. Oftentimes the words included in the text are words familiar to the reader's oral vocabulary, however, not words containing sound-spellings the reader knows yet.
Reliance on picture or context cues is short-lived. As levelled texts increase in complexity, they contain fewer cueing supports and more text. The absence of decoding work early on in the reading journey translates to a lack of orthographic knowledge later on, contributing to reading challenges as words become more complex. This breaks down the reader's fluency, motivation and comprehension.
Learn more in the webinar "Using Decodable and Leveled Readers Appropriately" by Linda Farrell and Michael Hunter.
Decodable books are not like “levelled” books. Decodable text is designed to provide readers with practice using the sound-spelling relationships they have learned in phonics instruction to blend sounds together in authentic reading experiences. They also contain high frequency words. Cognitive science shows that the reading brain needs to do the hard work of sound-by-sound decoding to build brain circuits necessary to read effortlessly and fluently in the future (Dehaene, 2009). Although the reading will sound more laborious than early predictable texts, the child is building crucial connections and skills for more fluent reading and comprehension to come.
By reading decodable text, children gain understanding of how the alphabetic principle works through sequential and cumulative reading experiences and how to apply sound-spellings (including meaningful letter strings) to unlock increasingly more complex words. Through their experiences with decodable books, children are better prepared to read other increasingly complex texts.
According to phonics expert Wiley Blevins (2021), quality decodable books should be instructive (mostly decodable with enough words containing the target phonics skill for children to have adequate practice decoding it), comprehensible (sentences follow authentic English language speech and writing patterns), and engaging (books children will want to reread that provide ideas and material to talk and write about). Learn more from Wiley Blevins in a webinar "Choosing and Using Decodable Text" here. One source of free online decodable books can be found at www.beyonddecodables.com.
Decodable Text Workshop
Many Surrey schools have purchased Flyleaf Publishing decodable books. They are one source of quality decodable texts for early readers. Teachers will find the scope & sequence helpful when planning sequential and cumulative phonics instruction that aligns with the decodable words in each book. Flyleaf offers free access to their e-book library until June 2024 HERE.
A 2-part recorded workshop (found below) offers ideas for using Flyleaf Publishing, or any other series of decodable text in early primary classrooms:
Part 1 (30 minutes)
Why teach with decodable text?
When is the time for learners to read decodable text?
Tips and steps to teach a decodable book.
Part 2 (24 minutes)
Ideas to make the most of decodable text throughout the day.
