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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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).
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).
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 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:
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.
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.
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.
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 four levels of Geodes—Level K, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3—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.
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.
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®.