Helping Libraries
Teach My Kid to Read (TMKTR) launched The Road to Decode in 2019 to enlist librarians to learn about, stock, and provide parents, caregivers, and educators with information and resources that help all children, especially early and struggling readers, learn to read.
Helping Families
Teach My Kid to Read’s Roadmap to Reading guides parents and caregivers through fundamental reading skills and provides support, guidance, and troubleshooting for anyone who wants to help children develop strong reading skills and even pre-reading skills (skills acquired before a child learns to read).
Using Decodable Books to Help with Reading
Structured literacy instruction assists all children to learn to read. Those with reading deficits will simply need extra time and practice developing core literacy skills. Decodable books are designed to allow children to learn to read independently, without guessing or picture prompting, which is especially beneficial for children who struggle to make letter-sound correspondences.
What are Decodable Books?
Decodable books are part of an explicit, structured reading approach designed to help children
practice decoding. They include a high percentage of words that children have been taught to
sound out and decode. They follow a specific scope and sequence, beginning with basic lettersound correspondences. Quality decodable books limit the use of these more difficult words in earlier stages to encourage children to use their decoding skills rather than guess or look around for pictures or cues.
Why Promote Decodable Books?
- Research proves that a phonics-based approach to reading helps all children learn to read.
- Decodable books enable children to practice the phonics skills they have learned and cumulatively build on these skills to develop fluency and confidence, becoming skilled readers.
- For children with dyslexia, a phonics-based structured approach is the only way they will learn to decode. All children benefit from this approach, whether or not they have a diagnosed learning difference.
- Decoding is a necessary skill for reading comprehension. If children cannot read the words, children will not comprehend what they are reading.
- As a matter of inclusion, all children should have access to resources that help them learn to read.
- Many school reading programs minimize the importance of decodable text, and children have little opportunity to practice their reading skills independently and learn how to decode words properly.
- Memorizing sight words is not the same as learning to read and should not be a primary teaching strategy, especially for children with learning differences.
- Decodable books help children master essential reading skills so that they can learn to read anything!
Other ways we help:
Library Programming
Educating librarians about the process of how we learn to read, helping with access to decodable books, and help setting up collections of decodable books and literacy resources.
Community Awareness & Education
Creating events and programs that educate the community about fundamental literacy skills and resources that help all children learn to read.