Summer break was almost here, and the school had planned an end-of-year trip for the students. Hugo’s first grade class was on their way to the zoo. The students were ecstatic!
It was a cool June morning at the zoo, and very few people had arrived yet. Soon the zoo would be full of visitors. The class entered through the gates bursting with energy.
“Children want to be self-reliant readers and are delighted when they can apply what they know," says reading researcher Dr. Louisa Moats. "Decodable texts give them that chance to feel like a reader!"
Hide Video Transcript Show Video Transcript
Decodable text is a necessary part of a phonics lesson. What's the point of learning the correspondence unless you can use it in reading? So it's to provide that practice. Many students need a lot of practice using what you've taught them in a phonics lesson. It's not often not great literature; it's not for that purpose. It's for providing practice and reinforcement. So how long does it need to go on? ... Until the student can use most of the regular correspondences to read words accurately, and the student has a sight vocabulary, if you will, of probably several thousand words. Students differ. Some students can make that transition more quickly than others. So you have to keep data on the accuracy of student reading with decodable text to be sure that they have internalized what they've been taught.
