Still Learning: Lizzie and Marie Answer Questions about Decodable Books!
Woot woot!
Dear Reader,
We received so many responses and questions from people we decided to do a follow up to our last newsletter about decodable texts. (Yay!) We chose three questions and worked our best to answer them below.
When do I make the switch from decodables to leveled texts?
What is the balance of decodable texts and leveled texts an early reader needs?
How do I determine which students will benefit from using a decodable text during instruction?
First, let’s think about names for various kinds of texts:
Highly Decodable - Highly decodable texts are texts in which 85-90% or more of the words are decodable. That means that most of the text only has words that students have studied already as part of systematic phonics instruction. In extreme cases some of these books don’t contain the word the because in most phonics programs the digraph th is taught after basic CVC words. These books often lose some meaning due to their highly decodable nature. The decodability target constrains the authors of these books so much that they don’t always make as much sense as they could.
An example of a highly decodable sentence with odd language structure:
Kit did sit in a pit.
An example of a highly decodable sentence with odd vocabulary and language: Tam did rip a sap map. (WHA!?)
Multi-Criterion Decodable - These texts take more than decodability into consideration and will have a good number of decodable words, but not always as high as 85%-90%. They will be comprehensible--that is, they make sense. They’ll have targeted vocabulary, and perhaps some of that vocabulary (for example, the word bus or the word sand) will be repeated throughout so that the child attends to the features of this word. They will have enjoyable plot lines or content. In order for the text to be comprehensible, these books will often have a few “story words.” This is a word like “butterfly” or “elephant” or “school” that is beyond a child’s ability to decode but needs to be used to make the book an enjoyable and understandable one.
Tip: Want to learn more about this? Read the beginning of Choosing and Using Decodable Texts by Wiley Blevins.
Leveled: These texts follow a gradient that accounts for things like print features (punctuation types), the number of words on a page, sentence complexity (dialogue) and various meaning considerations (plot, character development, vocabulary), and length of the text. These texts were designed for students to use the three cueing systems (Meaning, Syntax and Visual) in order to decode words. While the complexity of words may be a consideration in these texts, they are not written with the goal of supporting particular phonics features or being decodable for students.
Trade Books
These are the kind of books you find in the book store or the public library. We’ll categorize them a bit further.
Trade Books for Early Readers - These are books like Biscuit by Alyssa Satin Capucilli , The Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems, Pete the Cat by James Dean and Eric Litwin. These books were not written for decodability or for level. These authors wrote these books so that they’d be enjoyed by little kids. They often end up in leveled baskets and kids love to read them, but they might be tricky for them to decode depending on the words in the book.
Chapter Books - We’re not going to explain this deeply! You know there are early chapter books like Yasmin by Saadia Faruqi and then these books continue to become longer and more complex. Kids will likely be able to tackle early chapter books once they have mastered how to read predictable types of single syllable words (short vowel, silent e, vowel team, r control) and are working on two syllable words.
Picture Books- Picture books are often written to be read aloud to kids, they have fun, exciting illustrations for kids to look at. They were not written with decodability or level in mind.
So, when do I use what kind of book? Let’s think about purpose.
Purpose 1: Support early readers who are learning phonics and learning to use phonics to read.
One important (but not the only important) part of reading is decoding the words. Good readers use phonics to read the words. Well, actually, super skilled readers (like us adults) needn’t overtly phonics very much anymore. But that’s content for another post. Early readers need to learn to do this. Ideally, a child’s phonics grows and grows and then, the child possesses the phonics needed to read most words in books well. When you are working to teach a child to use phonics to read, it makes sense to use decodable text. It’s helpful to use texts that are comprehensible--and when possible, multi-criterion texts. We’ve found that young students do enjoy reading and discussing these books and working to apply their phonics. There’s both enjoyment and meaning making and also the thrill of the skill (it’s exciting to practice this work!). When phonics is taught well, students won’t be working on these skills and kinds of books forever! It’s a little like training wheels...or something. Go back to the purpose at the top of this paragraph. Let’s think--what text matches this purpose? Yep, decodables (or books carefully selected with phonics in mind). The earlier the reader is in their phonics learning, the more decodability matters. This means that kindergarteners and first graders need a lot of decodable texts.
Try It!
Let’s think about decodable vs. trade books. Grab a book like Biscuit or Elephant and Piggie - what phonics would be needed to decode this book? We took a trade book from the I Can Read! Pete the Cat series. A reader who has knowledge about concepts like CVC words, CCVC words (blends and digraphs), CVCe, Vowel Teams, and R Controlled vowels could probably tackle this book well. There are some simple two syllable words that the reader would need to attack using their phonics knowledge. Many readers in mid-late first grade, following a phonics sequence that covers the above, could work to independently decode this book. All this to say, that until a reader has a strong grasp of these basic phonics concepts, decodable texts will be very important.
Wiley Blevins, in Choosing and Using Decodable Texts, shares this great image. (Thanks, Wiley!)
Of course, you’ll need to determine which decodables and for whom. (a.k.a. What skills and books do I help kids work on?)
When trying to determine where to start with phonics instruction and decodable books you need to know what phonics skills your students have mastered and which phonics skills they need to learn next. Decodable text should follow and support your phonics instruction (rather than the other way around). The best way to do that is to use a phonic decoding assessment that assesses the progression of different phonics skills (CVC, CCVC, CVCe, CVVC, r- controlled). Most phonic decoding assessments look at students abilities to read low frequency words (not the most super common ones) and nonsense words. This helps determine if students actually know the phonics skill or not. After conducting the assessment, you can begin work within the child’s earliest area of need. (There are many places to find phonic decoding assessments, Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Letter Lessons and First Words by Heidi Anne Mesmer and How To Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction by Sharon Walpole and Michael C. McKenna. Walpole and McKenna offer some of their resources free here.)
Purpose 2: Support early readers who are building an interest in and love of books, alongside background knowledge, comprehension skills, and vocabulary.
Early readers need opportunities to appreciate and enjoy books. They need to engage in higher level thinking, hear rich language, and grow knowledge. There are (at least) two ways to do this.
The first way is by reading aloud rich texts to students that support the work of making meaning, learning vocabulary, and growing background knowledge. These texts should (in most cases) be far beyond what students could decode on their own.
The second way to do this is giving students opportunities to browse, look at, and read interest-based books --any books they want, alongside books (likely decodable) that they’ve read with you in small groups. Let’s think--what text matches this purpose? Trade books and perhaps leveled books, right?
So now, let’s go back to the three questions we chose to address in this post. What do you think?:
When do I make the switch from decodables to other texts?
What is the balance of decodable texts and other texts an early reader needs?
How do I determine which students will benefit from using a decodable text during instruction?
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References that Informed This Post:
Letter Lessons and First Words by Heidi Anne Mesmer and
How To Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction by Sharon Walpole and Michael C. McKenna. Walpole and McKenna offer some of their resources free here.
Choosing and Using Decodable Texts by Wiley Blevins