Using Decodable Text for Purposeful Practice

Decodable text provides a unique opportunity for beginning readers to successfully decode words and combine words to form simple sentences and stories. Confident and capable practitioners can apply their knowledge of skilled reading development and characteristics of beginning texts to utilize decodable text as an efficient and effective practice tool.

This presentation is based on an article featured in the recent Perspectives themed-issue on practice. The central ideas from this presentation are: 1. Decodable texts offer purposeful practice opportunities for the generalization of newly acquired word recognition skills within the context of connected text. 2. Any particular text is decodable to an individual reader only if there is also a strong match between the phoneme-grapheme correspondences included and those that the reader has learned. 3. Reading decodable text is not an add-in or isolated activity, but rather can be thought of as the culmination of practice opportunities with newly acquired…