A good quality, synthetic phonics program paired with decodable readers will ensure all students have the best chance of acquiring reading success.
According to reading
scientists and an ever-growing body of research, it is now indisputable that
decodable, phonic-based readers are most appropriate for beginner readers. In
order to improve global reading results, we need to focus on teaching reading
skills explicitly. A good quality, synthetic phonics program paired with
decodable readers will ensure all students have the best chance of acquiring
reading success.
For most people with reading difficulties, a
phonological deficit (difficulty working with the sounds in words), makes high-quality
instruction even more crucial. We need to engage students in a powerful evidence-based
program, such as Sounds~Write, MultiLit or Jolly Phonics, that
teaches them about the sounds in words and their relationship to letters. These
introductory literacy programs are most effective when complemented with
phonics-based readers.
Levelled readers undermine reading development
One of the major barriers to
the teaching of phonics is the adoption of reading levels by Australian
schools. Levelled books are classified in different ways depending on the
system but are based on the number of words, semantic difficulty and the
complexity of the sentences, rather than code knowledge that has first been
explicitly taught. What this means is that a book with a levelled vocabulary
can have mixed text in it with all kinds of spellings. Students may find some
books easy at a particular level (those that follow a predictable pattern, for
example) and others too hard. To deal with the difficulty students have
decoding text that contains spellings and word structures they have not yet
been taught, they are given strategies that undermine the reading development
process, such as guessing from context clues and pictures. These systems include a testing regime to
determine when children are ready to proceed to the next level. Well known
systems include Running Records, Lexile Framework for Reading, Reading
Recovery, Guided Reading and PM Benchmarking.
In many schools, there are
expectations in terms of levels for each grade. For example, students should be
at Level 23 by the end of Grade 2. Because reading skills are not taught
explicitly and systematically through these systems, students can find
themselves at the same level for a whole year. This can have detrimental
effects on their motivation and self-esteem. The systems that level books now
have a strong commercial base and schools prefer to buy books that fit into the
levelling system they are using.
Choosing phonically controlled books
To ensure that beginning
readers enjoy success, it is important to explicitly teach phonic skills. These
are the foundation skills of independent reading as they provide students with
the ability to decode words they have not seen before. Depending on the program,
teaching starts with the sounds of 5-6 letters of the alphabet, for example s,
a, t, i, m, and students are then taught to blend words containing just these
letters, eg sat, at, mat. As more letters are introduced, more words can be
decoded by the student. Once they can recognise and blend each of the letters
of the alphabet, they can be introduced to consonant and vowel digraphs and
alternate spellings of the vowel sounds. Good quality phonic readers will
follow a progression of introducing sounds and spellings. It is important to
ensure the progression of your readers will fit with your explicit phonics
program.
Students should be using
decodable readers for as long as they are learning to read. Decodable simply
means the student has acquired the knowledge and skills to decode the text.
Recommended Phonic Books
Dandelion Launchers and
Readers Little Learners Love Literacy InitiaLit Readers Decodable Readers Australia Letters and Sounds Snappy Sounds Jolly Phonics Level 0 orange
readers Fitzroy Readers
See more information about some of these recommended books on our Public Libraries page. Members can be borrow these readers from the SPELD SA library. The readers may also be purchased from our shop.
Readers for older students with literacy difficulties
Phonic Books UK have published
a series of Catch-up readers for older students (from around Year 3). These
follow the same progression for introducing sounds as the Dandelion Launchers
and Readers but contain more age-appropriate text and illustrations. To determine
where to start with your student, a placement test is available on the Phonic
Books UK website.
Further Reading
Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert by Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, and Kate Nation
How Spelling Supports Reading And Why It Is More Regular and Predictable Than You May Think by Louisa Moats
Whole-Language High Jinks: How to Tell When “Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction” Isn’t By Louisa Moats Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Martin A. Davis, Jr
Teaching decoding by Louisa Moats
Putting research into practice for teaching beginning readers: One school’s move to implement evidence based instruction by Principal, Steven Capp, BWPS
Outline of the literacy progression in the Australian Curriculum - emphasizes the need for students to apply knowledge with decodable texts
Outline of the skills of developing fluency using decodable texts and then moving onto what we would term levelled readers once decoding is firm.
Can I use decodable readers with PM readers by
Decodable Readers Australia
SPELD SA is a not-for-profit organisation providing advice and services to children and adults with specific learning difficulties and those who care for, teach, and work with them.
For over 50 years we have been delivering a range of services to the community including educational training, parent workshops, educational consultations, psychological assessments, tutoring, literacy intervention programs and extensive resources through our library and bookshop.
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