Shannan Salvestro

Today we have gathered a lovely group of advisors from the literacy team together to have a discussion about decodable readers. Now we get we come across a lot of questions and a lot of things that people are wondering about and we thought we'd tap into some of those things that people are thinking by having a discussion amongst ourselves. Now I've got some advisors here from the literacy team. I have Sarah Martin, Hayley Millard, Martha Garven, Megan Clark and Vanessa Dimitroulas and we're going to chat about decodables. Hopefully we're going to talk about what they are, what their purpose is and how we use them. So, I'm going to start with probably the most obvious question but is the obvious place to start, what are decodable readers? Martha can I go to you for an explanation for us all. What is a decodable reader?

Martha Garven

Absolutely, thanks Shannan. So decodable readers are books that are specifically written for beginning readers. There’s still a story with the beginning and a middle and end but the words in these books have been really carefully selected so that students can practise the sounds that they're learning during explicit systematic phonics instruction. Decodable readers follow a sequence of letter sound relationships, or grapheme and phoneme relationships, and the point is that teachers explicitly teach these graphemes and phonemes then gives students immediate practise at blending these to make words. So basically, decodable readers are a tool for effective reading instructions or beginning readers and they help students to learn the alphabetic code. It may be good to look at some of the features of decodable texts.

Hayley, did you want to have a chat to us about that?

Hayley Millard

Yeah thanks Martha I'll pick up there, that sounds good. I think it's definitely worth noting the key features of the decodable texts because if we can get a really good understanding of the decodable texts and what makes up a good quality decodable text then schools will be able to use that information to source their own resources going forward as well but it also helps teachers to understand just why they're such a good tool for instruction and to support this synthetic phonics and their phonics sequences. So what we are really looking for, and is the key feature in a good decodable text, is that around 80% of the words in those texts are actually decodable and that's to support students to apply their phonic knowledge in solving those words.

The other thing that we look for, and this sort of supports fluent reading, is high frequency words. Sometimes these are known as sight words but that really supports students to develop that skilled fluent reading. We also look for the fact that those phoneme-grapheme matches are clearly shown on those texts and that's so that we can support schools to carefully select texts that support their individual phonics sequence within their schools. We look for the fact that targeted phoneme grapheme correspondences are also included in a multitude of ways in a myriad of different words so that we can really see whether or not the student is applying that phonic knowledge in a range of contexts.

A teacher will be really able to see whether or not they grasp that particular match and then it comes down to how the text is actually made up itself so we look for the fact that the text is continuous, that the text is well spaced, the text is adequately sized, and it's printed clearly across the page and then the other thing that we look for obviously is that the punctuation is included throughout the text as well as we know that's really important in the early years of reading.

Now Little Learners Love Literacy and Decodables Australia they were the 2 publishers that was successful through the Department of Education's procurement processes* and they've been really quite clever and what we like about those was that there was like he said a simple narrative structure and that means that as a teacher I can sort of start to treat a little bit of the comprehension focuses that I might have but it also means that they obviously support that synthetic, systematic and sequential phonics sequence that might be in my school as well and while those 2 publishers were successful in the procurement processes it should be noted that we actually do have a range of publishers that schools can you know source their decodable texts from so long as we are meeting those key requirements that we've just outlined and those key features of a decodable texts can be found on the decodables text page on the department's website as well.

Shannan Salvestro

Thank you, Hayley it's great that you actually mentioned books from different publishers and different series of books because that gets me thinking about the differences in those sequences that some of those series can follow because I know that a query that has come our way, and something that we've been we've been thinking through, is you know wondering how you use or how you align those sequences of books to one another and how you could perhaps pull in a book from another series from a different publisher in into your instruction and independent practise. Megan, I wonder if you can contribute there about that?

Megan Clark

Yeah, more than happy to Shannan, thank you, and it's a really great opportunity to be able to sort of address I guess a lot of the questions that are really coming up about the use of scope and sequences. And you know which ones and how we approach that in our schools. But I guess one of the really important things to note that we actually have a sample scope and sequence that’s available on the Universal Resources Hub and our team developed that with Deslea Konza as a part of our effective reading phonics professional learning. So that's available there for schools to have a look at and you know use as they see fit.

But what we do know around scope and sequences is, there are a lot out there and some schools develop their own and some adopt them from other places and either is fine really I guess the power of that scope and sequence is really about having one that's used across the whole school and it really forms that Tier 1 structure for Early Stage 1 and Stage 1. What we do know really about our scope and sequence is they really need to start off with that single phoneme grapheme correspondence in order for students to be able to start to blend together VC and CVC words for reading.

The idea being that we teach those phoneme grapheme correspondences in the service of blending which is our first reading strategy. Then what we also know is those scope and sequences really need to build from that simple code and move through into that extended code. So increasing in complexity in a systematic way. The idea being that we teach those phoneme grapheme correspondences explicitly moving through the sequence as fast as we can but as slow as we need to.

Where decodables fit within this is the actual purpose. So we use them for reading instruction and they offer opportunities for students to practise those phoneme grapheme correspondences that they've been explicitly taught along of course with high frequency words as Hayley mentioned.

And we don't want to use texts that are beyond the students reach so we don't want the text that we're using for our reading instruction to contain phoneme and grapheme correspondences that we haven't actually explicitly taught our students. So just in the way that we've always done I guess that key message is around text selection. So we've always looked really carefully at choosing texts for instruction to meet the need of students and to meet them at their point of need so decodables are the same. We look really carefully at selecting the decodable texts that are going to best support our students and meet them at their point of need.

So it doesn't really matter too much if it's a ‘Decodable Readers Australia’ text or it's a ‘Little Learners Love Literacy’ text, it doesn't really matter what series we use so long as what's contained within the text actually meets the students need. So we are looking for opportunities for students to practise what they've been explicitly taught in the service of reading and opportunities for them to be able to blend those phoneme and grapheme correspondences together to ensure that they're building that fluency in their reading.

Shannan Salvestro

Thanks Megan that's interesting to hear that we can use those books from different publishers and we can incorporate the books from a different series as long as we have first looked at the book and done that careful thinking, that text selection, to decide is this book the right book for what this student has been learning and is now learning and practising at this point in time. It's all about is that the right level of complexity for that for that student and what they're learning.

So that then makes me move on. We talked about using and incorporating the different decodable books. Are we only using decodable texts? I know that’s something that people have wanted to hear advice about from our team. So, Vanessa I know we've had a recent discussion on this I thought you might like to sort of shed your thoughts on that one. Are we only using decodable texts?

Vanessa Dimitroulas

Thank you Shannan, we did have a bit of an in depth conversation about this the other day about do we only use decodable texts. Martha and Hayley and Megan have done a great job so far about talking about the role of decodable will texts and what are they and how the decodable text were chosen for our schools but also that really important aspect of how a teacher goes around the choice of decodable text within the classroom by Megan there and I think it's so important that in the classrooms, as we’re experiencing moment, is where we've got that lovely explicit teaching of the phoneme and grapheme mapping and to confirm those skills in students we’re using decodable texts to confirm what they've learnt within the explicit teaching but also to that individual adaptation and use.

Because that's what it's about it's about learning the phoneme and grapheme match for our early readers to be able to then use independently on text because that's the starting point for students to continue to read further. When I saying that, as we're all aware, phonics is a constraint skill. So as Megan was saying as fast as you can slow as you need but the point is we need to develop these skills quickly and reinforce the learning through decodables so we can give students the access the adaptability to expand in to other texts, to expanding to other text types.

In saying that, I'll just backtrack a little bit if that's okay in terms of thinking about when we are confirming with students about the knowledge about the phoneme and grapheme match and students are accessing decodable texts in the classroom, they’re still hearing quality text read by the classroom teacher, that rich experience we can give them in the classroom, that they're hearing engaging with and using possibly some of the language of those lovely quality texts the teachers using. So being supported in the classroom while we're helping these beginning readers to make those lovely nice tight connections with the phoneme and grapheme. But as soon as we've confirmed as a teacher that the students hold and control these skills really really well, we can move s student on from decodables into the other text types. So we're looking at predictable text as well as controlled texts.

So there's 3 points I'd actually like to highlight with this about do we only use decodables and it's something that I like to think about in my mind is that 1, we're doing explicit teaching instruction and it's outlined in the K to 2 syllabus the importance of this and it's an important part of learning to read.

Students need to make that mapping from the sound to the grapheme on the page and being able to make those connections to blend but also the variability within that, the adaptability, I’ve learnt of the ‘at’ blend so what happens when I put a /c/ in in front of it or a /s/ in front of it or if I change the ending on it? So bringing that together in a meaningful way that beginning reading needs to support students to develop the skills to read and write and we're always giving them access to something that's easy.

So confirming the skill of what they've just been taught in the classroom and easily applied, independent level. I have concerns about giving students different texts if they haven't been chosen successfully to support the learning that's just being happened in the classroom but also if it's too hard to access without having the skills behind, being able to decode words on page and access to the language, it's going to almost make our struggling readers even struggle harder.

We want to make things easy for them to commence reading with. And then most importantly of all, reading practise is important. So we've got to get the students in and reading different types of texts especially as teachers we’ve confirmed that our students have strength, skills and knowledge in the mapping between the phoneme and grapheme to successfully read a variety of books and adapt and be flexible in their knowledge.

So overall our aim is always to have successful readers in the classroom and students are engaged and interested in reading so we do use decodable texts at point in time but beyond that when we've got confirmation our students are successfully adapting the skills they've learnt of course we're going to give them access to other text types and other books.

Shannan Salvestro

Yeah thanks Vanessa it really is important to stress that message isn’t it about that the decodable texts are the most effective text to use for that initial instruction and for that independent practise. I think you know that it's really nice to hear though that message about how you know and when a student is ready and we might know that because it's when their word recognition has almost caught up with their language comprehension skills. When that is happening that we would then perhaps introduce some different types of texts. But it's important to know when it's appropriate to do that.

I guess that makes me want to ask you then what's your thoughts. Do we throw away the books that we were using perhaps in that initial instruction or that we were using, for example our predictable readers, or our levelled readers? Would we ever be telling anybody to do that?

Vanessa Dimitroulas

[Laughs} No not at all. I was reading something by Timothy Shanahan the other day saying the idea about giving students a diet of books to read and I think that's really really important as I'll say before it's about interest and engagement and students wanting to read. I think because I have heard of some school saying we’re using decodables and not using other texts. Like I think we’ve clearly outlined so far, decodable texts are used at point in time to help and confirming students how to go about decoding and making that phoneme grapheme match but once our students have developed their skills we move them on to different text types, like we're saying that flexibility and adaptability to be able to read different types of text

Shannan Salvestro

Thanks Vanessa. It sounds really clear that the place for decodables is for that early reading instruction and practice and once it's in their control and that word recognition has caught up then we then we can introduce these other texts, and we're not throwing away those other texts because even though we're waiting until they're ready for those texts and there's other purposes perhaps for those texts as well beyond reading instruction, early reading instruction. So if it's clear that those are the books that we’re using for early instruction and practice does that then mean that those decodable books are only being used for kindergarten or for those early readers sort of kindergarten/Year 1. Sarah I know if you've had some thoughts on these would you like to join in there and share?

Sarah Martin

Absolutely Shannan I'm so glad you glad that you asked because we will always have a small percentage of students who experience difficulty with learning to read and mastering of that alphabetic code and whether that's due to challenges with phonological memory, phonological processing, rapid naming or other reasons which could be related to attendance and engagement we know that those students exist. They exist in the lower primary, the upper primary, high school and in the workforce.

Teaching those older students to read when they can see that their cohort are reading, spelling and writing independently comes with a really unique set of challenges. So the high-low collection of text that are available, and by high-low, I mean high engagement and low level text, they aim to help teachers and learners overcome some of those challenges with interesting age-appropriate stories that really appeal to and create that response particularly in a mature reader and there are many high-low decodables available now and many have sophisticated, edgy and thought provoking themes to elicit that discussion from students, all the while, building on their phonics knowledge as students move through.

And that's what our vulnerable students really need that engaging content combined with known letters and sounds that are in line with those taught sequences in the classroom. And some of those high-low texts include the TAP series Teens and Adults Phonics titles. Some of those titles are things like ‘Kid Mum’ and ‘On the run’ and there's an app to go with those books if that's what's preferable or more easily accessed. However, they may not be appropriate for some of our younger primary students but definitely eye-catching for our adolescents, particularly when those students are so used to sourcing texts on line that are really in their face and engaging we really want to try and mirror that in the text that they read, that are accessible.

Another example is the ‘Dangerous Games’ books from Blake Education and then written for student to a still mastering the alphabetic code and at those early years of decoding but of interest to the upper primary and high school students. And they have a wonderful other high low fiction and non-fiction collection which can be a nice step in between decodable books and mainstream books, and further to what Vanessa was saying variety really is the key because for older students who have failed, it's going to take a lot of convincing to get back in and have a go at another text, particularly if they're seen as boring. So really thinking about those special interests and themes that are relevant to those students who are having difficulties with reading.

So in answer to your question Shannan, yes there is absolutely a place for decodables beyond the early years and I'm really excited about what's out there now.

Shannan Salvestro

Yeah I'm excited. You've given me some ideas there are some books to go and look up. I hadn't heard of all of those titles before so I will be going and having a look at some of those now Sarah so thank you. And it is important to note that you know any time that someone needs that instruction in that practise that that we can use those decodable books and that there are a range of options out there.

Please visit the NSW DoE Literacy and numeracy website where you will find a range of resources and information including professional learning, access to our reading guides and reading resources, via the Universal Resources Hub and access to our Statewide staff room.

As always if you have any questions, you can contact us at literacy.numeracy@det.nsw.edu.au.

Okay this has been Shannan Salvestro together with the literacy team and that's goodbye for now. Thank you.