Decodable texts, word families and text features
Yola Center · 2020
This chapter presents a rationale for using decodable texts in the word level program in the first school year. This is followed by an outline of a guided reading session using ‘little readers’. The need to include word families and early text features in a word level program is also discussed. The presence of levelled readers in the classroom to increase lexical knowledge as well as daily shared reading of imaginative texts should ensure that children are continually exposed to quality literature as well as to decodable texts. After the introduction of about six sound/symbol correspondences, teachers can begin to draw children’s attention in a more systematic way to text features. Teachers could continue text features study, reviewing nouns as objects and subjects, before focusing on verbs in a simple sentence. The chapter also concentrates on action verbs, which are probably the easiest for the students.