Literacy News

WHY DECODABLE TEXTS?

With the implementation of our new Take Home Reading Library, it is important to continue to address the purpose…

1. BUILDS CONFIDENCE
   The use of decodable texts helps young readers become confident in their reading abilities.  When provided the opportunity to apply their phonetic skills to connected text, young readers become less dependent on others to word solve.
2. REINFORCES AND SOLIDIFIES UNDERSTANDING OF PHONICS
   When given a text that contains mostly decodable words, young readers learn that both the alphabetic principle and phonics work.  This knowledge can help unlock the world of books.  If students receive explicit, systematic phonics instruction, but it is followed up with texts that have limited connection to the same skills, we run the risk of reinforcing the wrong idea: that phonics is random and has little to do with reading.  Instead, if explicit, systematic phonics instruction is followed up with decodable text that text contains the phonetic elements taught thus far, students develop an understanding that words can be decoded.
3. BUILDS NEUROLOGICAL PATHWAYS 
   For emergent readers, the opportunity for repeated practice helps build critical pathways in the brain.

“When the brain encounters a word repeatedly, it builds neural networks for the spelling, pronunciation, and the meaning of the word.  Scientists believe that a model of this word that includes the information in all of these networks will eventually be formed and stored in the area of the brain referred to as the word form area…It is through explicit phonics instruction that these word form networks are created.”  Marilee Sprenger, Wiring the Brain for Reading: Brain Based Strategies For Teaching Literacy, pages 106-107.