As educators, we want our students to grow in confidence as they learn to read. Using decodable readers has been shown to allow children to build knowledge of letters and their sounds. To fully understand how decodable readers help children when they are first learning to read, we need to understand what a decodable text is.
What are decodable texts?
A decodable book has been especially written with the beginner reader in mind. They start with simple words such as VC (Vowel-Consonant) and CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words. Instead of relying on repetition of words or the predictability of a story, decodable texts are designed in a way that allows children to sound out letters running left to right across the page.
By using decodable texts, children are given the time to learn letter and sound relationships. Meaning that they learn the grapheme, the letter, and understand what its correlating sound or phoneme is.
Why they’re essential for our children when they are learning to read
One of the reasons why decodable texts are so important for new readers is that it allows them to read words based on the sounds they have learned. When they pick up a decodable book, they should already know the sounds for the letters they see. That way, they will be able to successfully read words from left to right by sounding each letter and blending them together.
Students who need reading intervention support or who have dyslexia often benefit from using decodable texts. Especially within educational therapy sessions, the use of these texts can help these children find success and gain confidence. Learning to read relies upon systematic teaching of grapheme and phoneme relationships. Teamed with decodable texts young children can grow in confidence with each page they read.
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