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“Fully decodable” just means “buy our books”

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Educational publishers now know there’s strong demand for decodable books, and are marketing many as ‘fully decodable’. But fully decodable to whom?

A book is only ‘fully decodable’ if its intended reader has been taught the sound-spelling relationships and high-frequency words it contains. Books that are fully decodable to Year 2 students aren’t fully decodable to Year 1 students, let alone students in their first year of school. It depends on what’s been taught, and each phonics teaching sequence is different.

So, buyers: beware. Avoid books marketed as ‘fully decodable’ that don’t clarify for whom – according to which teaching sequence, and at which point. Otherwise, it’s a meaningless term.

I also wish book covers didn’t list graphemes without example words clarifying the phonemes they represent. What exactly is the point of a cover that says ‘ea’, ‘oo’ or ‘ear’? Does the book practise ea/sea, ea/head, ea/break, or all three? oo/moon or oo/good, or both? ear/hear, ear/learn and/or ear/bear? You often have to look inside the book to find out, which is hard if you’re ordering online.

Another common problem is that many ‘fully decodable’ book covers list target graphemes THAT ARE NOT EVEN IN THEM, or appear only in one or two words. The Mog And Gom Library looks like a real bargain, but Book 41 targeting ‘ur’ has only the word ‘turns’ in it, and Book 63 targeting ‘ph’ has the word ‘elephant’ six times and no other words containing ‘ph’. If your lesson was about ‘ur’ or ‘ph’, these books don’t offer much lesson-to-text match. When a book cover lists multiple target graphemes that don’t/can’t all represent the same phoneme, maybe it’s really a mainstream book with a retrofitted decodable cover? Again, where’s the lesson-to-text match?

The rest of this post aims to help teachers in my home state of Victoria, Australia, choose decodable books to match our local Phonics Plus sequence. Apologies to interstate and international readers, please listen to/sing your favourite song and have some chocolate instead of reading on.

Phonics Plus aligned decodable text in Year 1 and 2

The Victorian Education Department has been rolling out materials for its F-2 phonics and morphology teaching sequence, Phonics Plus, for over a year. No published decodable books neatly match this teaching sequence (some are probably in the pipeline), but this helpful document was made available to help schools choose and sequence decodables for children in their first year of school (which I’m learning to call Foundation, not Prep).

Unfortunately, there’s still no such official document for Year 1 or 2 of Phonics Plus. Which is a worry, because our school year finishes in less than two weeks, then it’s the silly season, then summer holidays, and then the kids who just did Phonics Plus in Foundation will start Year 1. I don’t want anyone to rush into buying poor-quality books, or for teachers all over the state to have to spend hours researching better options and matching their lessons to these texts.

I’ve therefore drafted a Phonics Plus decodable book alignment for Year 1 (click here to download it), and started work on Year 2. These are suggestions only, and not comprehensive. We don’t sell decodables except the affordable, download-and-print Phonics With Feeling books, from which the author/illustrator receives 50% of income (not the usual 5-15%, which is still not much given the work she put into them, and their high repetition of targets, so her books appear first on my lists). Nobody paid or lobbied to have their books listed, and I’d love you to put any feedback or suggestions you have in the comments.

Books from Australia and the UK

The Year 1 list has Australian books first, as they’re most relevant to our accent, spelling, vocabulary and culture. Books from the UK are listed next, as their accent is quite similar to ours (non-rhotic, i.e. they don’t say word-final /r/), and most people here (except the Labor Party) follow their spelling system. Our vocabularies are also fairly similar, though they differentiate ‘chips’ and ‘crisps’, and think cars have trunks, and thongs are underwear.

I haven’t found time to include books from America or elsewhere, but the American English accent, spelling system, vocabulary and culture are all fairly different from ours (I still can’t believe the US has school active shooter drills instead of sensible gun laws). I suggest investigating American decodables if suitable books from Australia and the UK, and maybe Aotearoa/NZ, can’t be found. At some stage I might find time to add some US books to lists.

List colour-coding

A book can include some or all of the targeted spellings in a given Phonics Plus Set, and many contain extra spellings not in this teaching sequence. I’ve therefore colour-coded book titles as follows: green = contains one/some of the Phonics Plus targets; black = contains all the targets; red = contains extra targets for that phoneme. I hope this colour-coding helps teachers find easier and harder books for kids who need differentiation, as well as books that cover all target spellings.

To be certain you’re spending your school decodable books budget wisely, read all books yourself before bulk ordering. You can read the ones on our display in North Fitzroy, if we have the books of interest to you. Our waiting room has comfy couches, and some days we even have an empty room you could use. On my list, the colour of book series’ names indicate which ones we have on display (black = whole sets, purple = partial sets, pink = none yet, so information is based on catalogues or online sources).

Supplier links

My list also includes links to suppliers/publishers – just click on the series name the first time it appears. Most nonprofit AUSPELD members supply decodables – see the SPELD VIC, SPELD NSW, SA SPELD and DSF bookshops – and their bookshops help fund other services they offer to people with learning difficulties and their families/teams. If you can get your books from them, please do.

Alison Clarke