Video: The Unboxing of Decodable Books
Half-Pint Books
We received from our district—without request and with limited explanation—a set of decodable books. Having never seen an emergent reading decodable book that was worthy (in my opinion), I set the boxes aside. For several months. As you’re aware, I make a lot of the reading materials I use for instruction and I also utilize some decodable passages with accompanying comprehension questions that I found on TPT (Anne Gardner).
This post explains my thinking—backed by research—when it comes to decodable books. According to Wiley Blevins, quality decodable books must be 1) comprehensible, 2) engaging, and 3) instructive. Instructive means that the majority of the words are decodable. That part is usually true. But decodable books are rarely one and two—comprehensible and engaging—and that is why I have mostly avoided them.
But these particular boxes of books were cute and inviting, and when the district sent us two more so that we would have four copies of each title, I decided to open the boxes and check them out. I’ll share that here with you, just in case you’re wondering about Half-Pint Readers.
Update: My students loved reading these books throughout the rest of the school year. Highly recommend!