Decoding and Decodable Readers

It is really exciting to hear the buzz about decodable readers! It is hard to understand why this comes across as a new thing, when in fact early reading instruction should be all about decoding. 

The flavour of the last few decades for reading instruction has been focused on terms like immersion, whole language, balanced literacy and pretty much hoping that kids learn to read by being exposed to text. Don't get me wrong, I believe that from a very early age, children should be exposed to all forms and levels of text and vocabulary, however, the process of learning to read must be much more explicit and structured.

So what is decoding? 

The Australian curriculum provides a definition of decoding;

"A process of working out the meaning of words in a text. In decoding, readers draw on contextual, vocabulary, grammatical and phonic knowledge."

Given that the evidence based research tells us that effective reading instruction should start with explicit, systematic, phonic instruction, I believe that the above definition really needs to work in reverse. Without instruction in phonic knowledge, the learner can make no sense of the text or draw on the context. This is why many struggling readers rely heavily on the illustrations to gain some context or meaning. 

Decodable readers work through a structured progression, which matches the child's level of learning in knowledge of letters and sounds. As the learner becomes more efficient and automatic in their letter/sound knowledge, the complexity of the words can build.

While in the initial stages, the books lack interesting story lines, the confidence, reading skill and reading experience can progress at the same time.

As I always say (and have learned from the experts), explicit, direct, systematic, multisensory, phonic based instruction, based on the sound structure of language, is good for dyslexic learners, but also good for all learners!

Decodable readers work hand in hand with this approach. Our Meet the Snats book is a decodable reader, perfect for early learning!