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As the new school year begins, many educators and librarians are talking about decodable books as an important tool for reading instruction.
First, let’s talk about what decodable books are.
Reading Rockets explains that decodables are books written for new readers that allow them “to use their developing segmenting and blending skills to read words in order to develop automaticity, or the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly, and experience independent reading success.”
The idea is that these books will help readers build the skills to sound out words using a set of decoding strategies rather than relying on repetitive text or context clues like pictures, which can help readers guess words rather than reading them. Decodable books are often series, which allow students to build their phonics skills and grow in confidence before moving toward more complex text.
While many educators believe decodable books have an important role to play, there are also some who are critical of the books. An Education Week article on decodable books points out that one of the primary criticisms is that decodable books are boring due to the limitations of language used. Proponents of using decodable texts say that these are not the only books students should read or what they will read for a long time. In that same article, Heidi Anne E. Mesmer, who is a professor of reading at Virginia Tech, explains that decodable books should “be used like ‘a set of training wheels on a bicycle.’” They are really only intended to help the reader build a foundation for lifelong reading skills.
One well-known example of decodable text is the Bob Books. These popular titles have long been challenging for libraries because they were published in sets of small paperback books that were not easily packaged to be shelved in libraries or used in a circulating collection. Beginning this fall, Scholastic will be publishing hardcover bind-ups of the Bob Books. Bob Books: Set 1 will be published in November with additional hardcover bind-ups to follow beginning in February.
As more schools utilize decodable books in their curricula, school and public libraries will see increased requests for these titles. Over the last couple of years, publishers have been producing more decodable book series, and we have created a complimentary ipage list to help Ingram customers find these titles for their collections. Our Decodables and Phonics Readers ipage list will help you skip some the work of searching for these titles. The list is regularly updated, so you can know that you are always finding the most current titles available.
If you want to learn more about decodable books, the Colorado Department of Education has a helpful website on the subject.
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