Leveled, Decodable, Readable: What Does Research Say About The Right Texts For Your Beginning Readers?

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As the science of reading has dominated the national conversation around early literacy, educators everywhere have been hard at work bringing their understanding and their practice in line with research-based approaches to reading instruction. This means learning how both word recognition and language comprehension come together in skilled reading, putting high-quality foundational skills programs and ELA curricula in place, figuring out how to assess and monitor student progress, and so much more.

One piece of this puzzle is the texts that are used during instruction and that are made available to students so they can practice their growing literacy skills and, hopefully, build a lifelong love of reading. Educators may find themselves wondering about the books they already have on their classroom bookshelves, or they may be looking for new texts that align with all the research-based instructional shifts they are making. Either way, it’s important to consider how different types of books may be more or less effective in helping students become skilled readers.

Below, we dive into what research says about different types of texts that commonly show up in conversations about early literacy so that educators can choose and use texts in a way that will strengthen instruction and support student success.

Leveled Texts: Popular in Schools, But Do Not Support Learning and Equity

A 2020 EdWeek Research Center survey found that 61 percent of K–2 teachers use leveled texts in small group work. What exactly are leveled texts? They are books that have been sorted into categories—usually a system of letters or numbers—to signal to an educator how difficult a book is to read, and they typically show up in guided reading and balanced literacy classrooms.

As part of the instructional process, a student’s reading level is also assessed, and they are limited to reading books at or within a certain range of their level. Teachers usually work with students in small groups as they read assigned texts to provide instruction and support as needed. When students get stuck on an unknown word, they are generally encouraged to look to context or meaning, sentence structure, and visuals such as pictures or letters to guess at what word might make sense. This instructional method, known as three-cueing or MSV, is not supported by the science of reading (Schwartz 2020b; Schwartz 2023; Louisiana Believes, n.d.).

There are several different systems with different criteria for sorting books and students into levels. In some cases, sets of books are specifically written and leveled as part of a larger program, while in other cases these systems are used to rank known titles for their difficulty. Here are the basics of some of the most popular leveling systems in use:

The F&P Text Level Gradient, also referred to as Guided Reading levels, was created by Dr. Irene Fountas and Dr. Gay Su Pinnell and first introduced in 1996. To sort books into levels A–Z+, leveling experts consider 10 factors related to text difficulty, including genre, text structure, content, themes and ideas, language and literary features, sentence complexity, vocabulary, words, illustrations, and book and print features (“About Leveled Texts,” n.d.).

Students are typically assessed up to four times per year, and the assessment can take up to 40 minutes per student. First, students read sample texts aloud while their teacher records behaviors related to their reading accuracy and self-corrections. Then a Comprehension Conversation that follows allows the teacher to assess a student’s understanding of the text using a rubric. A student’s accuracy and comprehension scores are then combined to determine their level (“Fountas & Pinnell,” n.d.).

The Lexile Framework was developed in 1989 by MetaMetrics and measures the complexity, or readability, of a text based on sentence length and word frequency. Students also receive a Lexile measure of their reading ability based on standardized reading assessments that can report out scores as Lexile measures. Lexile measures are shown as a number ranging from zero to 1600+ followed by the letter “L” (e.g., 0L, 100L, 1200L), and books or students that are below 0L on the Lexile scale are assigned a Beginning Reader (BR) code. Students are typically assessed multiple times per year and are matched with texts that fall within a range of 100L below to 50L above their measured level (Lennon and Burdick 2014).

Pearson’s Developmental Reading Assessment was developed by former educator Joetta Beaver and first released in 1997. DRA levels range from A1 to 80, and leveling experts sort texts based on factors, including text content, vocabulary, and complexity (e.g., number of sentences, number of words, sentence length). Students are typically assessed up to three times per year, which involves teachers listening to students read a passage aloud and retell what was read. Teachers assess students’ reading engagement, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension to determine their reading level (Altmann 2019; “DRA3 Overview” 2020).

The Accelerated Reader program, created by former educator Judi Paul, was first released in 1986. The computer-based program uses a readability formula called ATOS to measure the complexity of a text based on average sentence length, word length, book length, and word difficulty or grade level. Based on these factors, texts are assigned a number value (e.g., 1.0 or 2.5) that represents the grade level and month at which the average student will be able to read the text (“Research Foundation” 2015; Renaissance Learning, n.d.).

To use the program, students take a standardized test of general reading ability to determine their reading level. The program then provides a list of books within a recommended range of that level, which is individualized to each student. Students choose books of interest from that list to read and after finishing a book, they take a comprehension quiz so that teachers can monitor their progress (“Accelerated Reader” 2016).

Looking at these systems you can see that they evaluate texts, assess students, and guide instruction in different ways. When it comes to evaluating text difficulty, each system may place the same book at a different level, or a level that does not necessarily align with a publisher’s intended audience. This means that, when working with leveled texts, the books that a student has access to—and whether a book might be considered below, on, or above a student’s reading level—is very much dependent on the system being used.

Consider These Examples

“Five Little Kittens (Geller, 1999) is a 32-page picture book that the publisher labels appropriate for grades K–3…The [Accelerated Reader] level for Five Little Kittens is 2.6 [accessible in month 6 of grade 2]. This book has a Lexile level of 970 which equates to grades 6–7” (Renaissance Learning, n.d.).

Twilight has a Lexile level of 720, which is appropriate for the skill level of readers in about grade 3 or 4; an Accelerated Reader level of 4.9, which indicates it is accessible for readers entering grade 5; and a Guided Reading level of Z+, which places it at a high school level (Gonser 2020).

United by a Common (But Questionable) Goal

Despite the details that make each leveled text system different, leveled texts all generally come with the same core instructional idea. The goal of leveled text systems is to give each student just enough of a challenge that their reading abilities grow, but not so much of a challenge that a text or lesson becomes too difficult or frustrating for them to learn from. This idea was popularized by Emmett Betts, educator and literacy researcher, in the 1940s in his influential textbook Foundations of Reading Instruction (Shanahan 2020). Basically, Betts claimed that all readers have three reading levels:

Independent reading level, which involves texts that students can successfully and easily read without help.
Instructional reading level, which involves texts that are challenging for students, but that they can work with to improve their reading skills with a small amount of help from a teacher. Betts specifically said that instructional level texts are those that students can read with 95–98 percent accuracy and 75–89 percent comprehension, but different programs ultimately set their own specific targets and guidelines.
Frustration reading level, which involves texts that are so difficult for a student that they would not be able to learn from them or would require a lot of support to access the text (Shanahan 2020).

Leveled text systems aim to help educators identify a student’s independent and instructional reading levels so that teachers can offer books that will encourage growth in that student’s reading skills. But the problem with leveled texts and delivering instruction in this way is that it often places a limit on students’ ability to learn and excel.

The first challenge with leveled reading is that the assessments these systems use are not always reliable or accurate. The assessments also tend to focus on students’ general comprehension skills but can hide or fail to identify other underlying reading skill deficits such as decoding, vocabulary, or fluency (Schwartz 2023). The second challenge is that, by limiting students to texts they can already read relatively well, leveled text systems limit students’ exposure to, ability to practice with, and opportunity to learn from more complex text features, vocabulary, and language structures (Shanahan 2020). And finally, leveled reading systems ignore the ways that background knowledge and vocabulary can support a student in accessing different texts, even ones considered above their level. As a result, leveled reading tends to negatively impact student achievement and equity.

Research Spotlight: Leveled Texts

Even though leveled text systems are used widely in schools across the nation, benefits of the approach are not supported by research.

Research Theme: Assessment Accuracy

One study of nearly 500 students across grades K–8 found that 43 percent of students in grades K–2 and just 26 percent of students in grades 3–8 read at the same F&P level for fiction and nonfiction texts (Field Study, n.d.). In another study of grade 2 and 3 students, researchers looked at the percentage of words students read correctly from three leveled texts that were at their reading level according to the F&P system. The researchers found that “Only about one quarter of the time did the students read 93% to 97% of the words correctly when reading the book that was rated at their instructional level, and students who were struggling readers frequently failed to read at least 93% of the words correctly when they were reading from a book that was designated…to provide an appropriate level of difficulty” (Burns et al. 2015).
A study of nearly 1,000 grade 2 and 3 students compared the accuracy of oral reading fluency (the number of words read correctly from a passage in one minute) versus the F&P reading inventory for identifying students who were at risk of failing the Measures of Academic Progress for Reading (MAP–R) assessment. The study found that oral reading fluency correctly identified 86 percent of the students who did not score proficiently on the MAP–R assessment compared to just 31 percent correctly identified by the F&P reading inventory. In other words, “In a hypothetical school with 100 students needing intervention, 86 of the students who actually need an intervention based on MAP–R performance would be correctly identified using the [oral reading fluency] criteria. Only 31 of those students would be accurately identified using the [F&P] screening data” (Parker et al. 2015).

Research Theme: Achievement

In the first randomized control trial that tested the concept of the instructional level, 51 grade 2 students were placed in one of three groups—with books at their instructional reading level, two grades above their instructional level, or four grades above their instructional level—to read for 15 minutes daily along with a partner. “At the end of the school year, the students placed in books above their instructional level had made significantly bigger learning gains than those placed in the books supposed to facilitate their learning” (Shanahan 2020). This study was later replicated with grade 3 students, finding that weaker readers using texts at least two grade levels above their instructional level showed the biggest gains in oral reading fluency and comprehension (Brown et al. 2017).

Research Theme: Equity

A 2019 study looked at federal longitudinal data and compared students who were taught using ability-based (or leveled) reading groups in kindergarten through third grade versus those who were never ability grouped. The study found that “ability grouping concentrated and worsened reading gaps over time,” and students in low ability reading groups were ultimately more likely to enroll in grade 8 English classes that were below grade level. Researchers also found that “schools that served higher concentrations of students of color or low-income students were more likely to use ability grouping. And within the classes that used ability grouping, boys and students with behavior problems were more likely to be put in low reading groups, regardless of their academic ability” (Buttaro and Catsambis 2019).

What Do Leveled Texts Look Like for Beginning Readers?

As you can see above, the level of a text is determined by factors such as sentence length and word frequency, not by the presence of specific phonics patterns or degree of decodability. So what does this mean for our youngest learners? Early leveled readers are likely to be books with patterned or predicable text. This looks like books with the same sentence pattern repeated over and over with small changes in the sentence each time. The text is often closely matched with pictures, and the words included in these types of books do not necessarily contain letter–sound combinations that the reader has been taught through explicit phonics instruction. Patterned or predictable texts tend to use more natural or authentic language than other early readers, like decodable texts, which may have some benefit to student interest and reading fluency. The problem is, these types of books ultimately teach students to rely on repetition and pictures to guess at unfamiliar words, rather than relying on decoding skills, which is not rooted in the science of reading (Five from Five, n.d.; Shanahan 2019).

Picture1-Jul-30-2024-02-14-44-7898-PM Image Source: Martin, Bill (1967). Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Decodable Texts: Targeted, Repeated Practice of Word Recognition Skills

There is no research-based minimum or ideal percentage of words in a book that a student should be able to identify or sound out using their phonics skills for a book to be considered “decodable,” even though you may see recommendations of 50 to 64 to over 90 percent decodability. On this topic, education researcher Dr. Heidi Mesmer recommends, “Instead of thinking of books as ‘decodable’ or ‘not decodable,’ we simply consider the idea of ‘decodability’ to vary on a continuum, with some books having words that are more or less decodable to certain readers” (Mesmer 2020).

When students are just starting to learn to read, it is most important to look for books that are very high on that decodability scale based on the scope and sequence of your foundational skills instruction. This means decodable books that are mostly made up of words that students should be able to access using the phonics skills you have taught them so far, and that will give students repeated practice of any newly learned skills.

Decodable texts focus on words with regular letter–sound relationships and have been written to repeat the phonics patterns and high-frequency words (the most common words in printed text, which may contain regular or irregular sounds) that a beginning reader has newly or previously been taught. The goal with these texts is to give students the opportunity to read books that mirror the scope and sequence of their phonics instruction so that they can immediately practice the skills they are learning in the context of connected text. For example, when students have learned consonant and short vowel sounds during foundational skills instruction, they may work with a decodable text that includes and repeats CVC words such as cat, big, job, and sun—or words with similar patterns and sounds. The controlled practice and repetition offered by decodable texts have been found through research to benefit students’ reading accuracy (their ability to read words correctly) and their tendency to tackle unfamiliar words with decoding strategies and by sounding words out (Five from Five, n.d.; Mesmer 2020; Shanahan 2024).

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Image Sources: “Kindergarten, Series 1.” Heggerty Library. Accessed July 16, 2024. https://shop.heggerty.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/BTR_HeggertyLibrary_KindergartenDecodables_ScopeandSequence_092023.pdf

Allison, Cheryl. (2023). The Big Red Hat. Heggerty.

Because decodable texts control content in a particular way—focusing on phonics patterns—they are often criticized for having limited vocabulary, simple or boring storylines, and unnatural language. While this may be the case with some decodable books, these criticisms are not universally true. One comparison of popular decodable and predicable texts found that the decodable texts actually had an equal or greater number of total words and a greater number of different words, or a richer vocabulary, than the predictable texts (Dixon 2016). It’s important to remember that students initially benefit from the simplicity of decodable texts while they practice learned skills and build confidence with reading successfully, and that high-quality decodables are designed to get more complex alongside students’ developing skills. Ultimately, not all decodable texts are created equally, and educators should look for ones that are closely aligned with instruction, heavily reinforce regular letter-sound relationships, and have clear storylines.

Decodable Texts Have Their Limits

Decodable texts serve an essential purpose for early readers—to reinforce accurate and skilled word recognition. Still, research does not support the idea that decodable books should be used alone or for a prolonged amount of time. There is no agreement on the exact amount of time a student needs to spend practicing with highly controlled decodable texts, and some students may need the support of highly decodable texts longer than others as they master foundational reading skills. But literacy experts do agree that decodables are most beneficial at a specific stage of learning to read and when they are used alongside other types of texts (Mesmer 2020; Newman, n.d., Schwartz 2020a; Shanahan 2024).

Let’s look at that first factor: the when. Researchers have mapped out typical developmental stages that students go through when learning to read, and there is general agreement that decodable texts are most useful in earlier developmental stages. For example, education researcher and literacy expert Linnea Ehri has identified four stages of reading development:

Pre-alphabetic: This stage is typical of preschoolers (from about age three to five). These students have little to no knowledge of letters and how they represent sounds but are starting to recognize the meaning of non-letter symbols and basic print concepts (e.g., front and back covers).
Partial alphabetic: This stage is typical of students in kindergarten or grade 1. These students know all letters and are just starting to learn the relationship between letters and sounds. They often notice the first and last letters of a word, but do not have enough knowledge yet to systematically decode words correctly.
Full alphabetic: Students typically reach this stage by the end of grade 1. These students have learned all major letter–sound relationships and can use this knowledge to decode words.
Consolidated alphabetic: These students—typically in grades 2 and 3—group common letter patterns and combinations and become increasingly more automatic and fluent in their reading (Koriakin and Coyone 2015; “Typical Reading Development,” n.d.).

In the context of this framework, decodable texts are most useful for students who are transitioning from partial to full alphabetic reading (Newman, n.d.). Kuhn and Stahl (2022) offer a similar model of reading development, also with four stages—emergent literacy, novice readers, transitional readers, and post-transitional readers. They recommend decodable texts as students move into the novice stage and “the focus in terms of mechanics shifts from how letters, books, and words work to actual decoding.” They note that decodable texts provide students in this phase with needed support as they learn to blend sounds into words effectively (Kuhn and Stahl 2022).

The second factor to consider is the full range of texts being used in the classroom. Research suggests that students should be exposed to a wide variety of texts, even as they are learning and transferring skills using decodables. In 2023, Pugh, Kearns, and Hiebert released a meta-analysis comparing studies of early reading interventions that had students read no texts, decodable texts, non-decodable texts, or both decodable and non-decodable texts. Literacy expert Timothy Shanahan summarized the results of the study, saying, “The text regime that significantly outdistanced the others in terms of how well they nurtured decoding ability was the diet that included decodables along with other texts” (Shanahan 2024). Shanahan explains that a “…[D]iverse reading diet is important for students because it exposes them to a broader representation of the English language” (Schwartz 2020a). Bringing texts into instruction that are not purely decodables means you can expose students to all kinds of interesting content, rich vocabulary, and more challenging language structures that will nurture their interest and skill as developing readers.

Readable Texts: A Research-Aligned Bridge to the Library

Geodes® are a collection of books known as “readables”—a breakthrough category of texts that are grounded in the science of reading. What is meant by a readable text is that Geodes were carefully written and sequenced so that students can systematically practice the phonetic concepts and high-frequency words they have been taught through foundational skills instruction. At the same time, they offer students exposure to knowledge-rich books that are full of beautiful illustrations and information about the world. In other words, Geodes books attend to phonics patterns and decodability, similarly to decodable texts, but are less controlled than many decodable texts so that they can include more complex and authentic storylines and enriching vocabulary. This combination captivates students and allows them to practice bringing their word recognition and language comprehension skills together on the road to skilled, independent reading.

Accessibility Makes Geodes Highly Readable

Image Source: Excerpt from Library Cat by Marya Myers, Geodes Level 1, Module 1, Set 2: Unusual Libraries.

A strong foundational skills curriculum systematically builds students’ understanding of letters, their sounds, and the ways that letters are often combined in English writing to produce specific sounds. Geodes align with the order and pacing of instruction with most major, high-quality foundational skills programs, and the words included in each text have been chosen very intentionally. At least 80 percent of the words in each Geodes book are either decodable (can be sounded out based on known phonetic concepts) or Fundations® Trick Words (high-frequency words with unexpected sounds) that have already been taught during foundational skills instruction. For example, when students are studying ch or sh consonant digraphs during foundational skills instruction, the four Geodes books in Level 1, Module 1, Set 2: Unusual Libraries are designed to reinforce those sound-spelling patterns—by incorporating words like chin, chat, bash, and dash—along with other skills students have learned to date. This repeated practice of learned skills helps accelerate student learning.

Geodes also contain grade-appropriate fonts and text-based supports that help developing readers find success with the texts. For example, words that are not yet decodable are surrounded by clusters of decodable words to ease cognitive load. And average sentence length, pattern, and complexity are increased gradually across levels to support students in building reading stamina.

Knowledge Provides a Foundation for Students’ Interest and Literacy Skills to Grow

The Geodes library is a mix of literary and informational texts that have been carefully researched and written to promote a deep reading experience and systematically build student knowledge about new places, cultures, and creatures. About 20 percent of the words in each Geodes text are nondecodable, and this allowance provides flexibility to present rich subject matter with precision. Certain nondecodable words, or Recurring Content Words, are even repeated across books to reinforce the module’s content vocabulary and enable students to access and express the rich knowledge inside of each book.

There are three levels of Geodes—Level K, Level 1, and Level 2—and each level contains four modules of up to 16 books that center on a compelling topic that sparks students’ interest, curiosity, and delight. These connected text sets allow students to immerse themselves in interesting content and deepen their knowledge as they explore. And we know from cognitive science research that this is beneficial to students as background knowledge supports a reader’s recall and summarization, promotes focus and organization, and provides the foundation for higher-order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating.

In Level K, students zip across the sky with Amelia Earhart in Fly, Amelia, Fly; team up with Alexander the cat in Museum Cat to protect the Hermitage Museum in Russia; and snorkel through the waters of Australia in The Great Reef.

Grade 1 students can analyze the different ways that wind affects life on earth and how wind energy can be used to generate power in Towers of Nashtifan, and Bee Waggle and Super Spiny Mouse let students discover intriguing animal traits and behaviors.

In grade 2, students explore the four seasons around the world in books such as Seed Stash and Daytime Darkness. They see into the lives of Native Americans in books covering the westward expansion of the United States, learn about civil rights heroes and examine their impact on equality and justice in the United States, and investigate where food comes from and how it fuels our bodies and communities.

Differentiation

If you are used to using leveled texts, or maybe after reading about leveled texts, you might be wondering how a single Geodes book can meet the instructional needs of students of all different reading abilities. Rather than limiting students to books of a certain level based on general reading or comprehension skills, Geodes can be flexibly used for both scaffolding and extension, ensuring that all students have access to authentic, information-rich books.

Learn more about differentiated, small-group instruction using Geodes.

Along the road to skilled, independent reading, students are most likely to experience one of three core reading hurdles: difficulties with accuracy, fluency, or comprehension. The Inside Geodes® teacher resource offers comprehensive guidance on how to target these skill-based, root cause reading challenges using Geodes to help all students succeed. Geodes books can also be used to enrich and extend student learning, with a More section included in each text in English and Spanish that gives students the opportunity to build additional knowledge and vocabulary on each topic.

Building Your Classroom Library with Intention

Research tells us that the best way for students to learn to read is by providing explicit and systematic foundational skills instruction, practicing with texts that will reinforce those growing decoding skills, and exposing all students to complex, content-rich books with the support and scaffolding they need to access them. Take a closer look at how Geodes can enrich your classroom library and continue your learning with an overview of how complex texts are defined and used in core ELA instruction with Wit & Wisdom®.

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Alyssa Buccella

Alyssa has nearly a decade of education research experience. She has led equity and student success research to support K-12 public school districts across the country in addressing their most pressing challenges, including college access, mental health, social emotional learning, and racial justice. Alyssa holds a B.A. in Psychology and Global Studies and an M.Ed. in Globalization and Educational Change from Lehigh University.

Topics: Early Literacy Science of Reading Research Brief