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When you are teaching students to read, decodable text is essential! This is how your students will master the phonics skills that you taught them. This is how your students will feel successful at reading. As students gain phonics skills, their ability to decode words will improve. As their ability to decode improves you will be able give them longer and increasingly more difficult text to read. The texts should build upon one another. So today, I’d like to share five websites I’ve found for printing the best free decodables!
All of these texts are in book form and focus on phonics skills you should be teaching to your beginning readers. I have used most of them with my own students. We read some of them during our group, but, typically, I send them as homework. That way if a book gets lost, I can print a new one.
Websites with Free Decodables
1. The Measured Mom- This site is my favorite source for decodables. My students enjoy them and the fiction stories have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
2. This Reading Mama– She has many free printables on her website, along with a plethora of wonderful posts on teaching reading. Furthermore, the link will take you to a set of short vowel decodables.
3. Natalie Lynn Kindergarten- She has a set of decodable fairytales and fables. There are four different levels: cvc, cvc and double consonants, beginning blends, and digraphs. She, also, has a set of cvc decodables, one for each vowel, when you sign up for her newsletter.
4. Spinning Wheel Stories– On this site you can download a set of five cvc books. There is, also, a set with dyslexic-friendly font. I am going to give this set a try this year!
5. Charge Mommy Books– This site has decodable readers of varying phonics skills including vce, r-controlled, vowel teams, and dipthongs. There is a UFLI alignment document available to download on this page as well! This is another new one for me that I will be exploring more this year.
If You Have a Little Spend
Here are few great choices for if you have a little money to spend on some decodables.
1. High Noon books– They have great decodables and hi-lo chapter books for older struggling readers. I am not affiliated with them, but can’t leave them off my list!
2. Laugh-a-Lot Phonics: Blends and Digraphs– A set of 12 cute books for your students to read!
3. Nonfiction Phonics Readers Set 1– This set includes short vowels and blends with nonfiction topics your students will enjoy! And if you like these, there are 3 more sets you can purchase.
Conclusion
When selecting decodables to use with your students, make sure to look at all the skills needed to read the book. Do the sight words match what you’ve taught? Do the phonics skills align, or are there skills you haven’t taught yet? If it is two-three words, preteach them. Give your students the words and treat them like sight words. If it is more than three words, don’t use the book.
If you’re looking for a way to purchase books, but don’t have the money to spend right now, check out my post Top 10 Ways to Build Your Classroom Library on a Budget. Be sure to pin this post or save it to your bookmarks bar for easy reference to get to the best FREE decodables!