Decodable Books Explained! What are they? How are they Helpful to Emergent Readers?

Decodable books are an imperative in any primary classroom, be it English or French. They are important because a child who is learning to read needs to apply their growing linguistic knowledge to text. Decodable books offer students the opportunity to do just that!

WHAT ARE DECODABLE BOOKS?

Reading Rockets, an American website devoted to providing information on how children learn to read, defines decodable material this way:

Decodable text is a type of text used in beginning reading instruction. Decodable texts are carefully sequenced to progressively incorporate words that are consistent with the letter–sound relationships that have been taught to the new reader.

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/decodable-text-sources

Accordingly, any book or text source that contains the letter-sounds that a teacher has already taught the emergent reader should appear in a decodable book. These letter-sounds must be logically sequenced so that basic simple sounds are presented prior to more complex sounds such as diagraphs, diphthongs etc. These sound combinations usually involve consonant/vowel patterns or CVC patterns (i.e.: consonant/vowel/consonant).

DOES ECOUTONS, LISONS, RIONS OFFER DECODABLE BOOKS?

The ELR resource is designed to introduce basic phonological and letter-sound relationships to students who are new to French. The ELR texts present key words that contain the letter-sound relationship to be explicitly taught. However, the texts are not meant to provide students with independent practice. That being said, the ELR's extensive resource bibliography does provide references to educators wishing to add decodable books to their classroom libraries. For example, La collection ETRE, published by les Editions de l'envolée, is a series of decodable books that offer students decodable word practice. These books, along with other relevant decodable texts, make an excellent complement to the ELR resource .

https://www.envolee.com/en/collection_etre

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