Teaching Tip: What makes a good decodable book
Posted onDecodable books have been used for reading instruction for years. They can be very useful for providing students with opportunities to practice new phonics skills. But many teachers resist using them because of a variety of flaws in some of the decodable books on the market. A great number of decodable books have silly, nonsensical stories that are poorly illustrated. They also often have awkward or strange language structures. This makes reading the books very challenging for novice readers, especially English language learners.
The good news is that with the renewed interest in decodable books, much better options are now available.
What makes a quality decodable book? Here are some criteria for selecting a decodable book to use with your students: