Phonically decodable / cumulative / controlled phonics text is text that can be decoded or sounded out based on the letter-sound correspondences (GPCs) the student has already been explicitly taught. With this in mind, it is obviously desirable to use a decodable reading scheme that follows the same order of introduction of GPCs as the school's synthetic phonics programme.

Scroll down to see details of decodable book schemes.

In Oct 2010 the DfE introduced a revised set of criteria for synthetic phonics programmes. It included new advice on early texts to practise reading: '(E)nsure that as pupils move through the early stages of acquiring phonics, they are invited to practise by reading texts which are entirely decodable for them, so that they experience success and learn to rely on phonemic strategies. It is important that texts are of the appropriate level for children to apply and practise the phonic knowledge and skills that they have learnt. Children should not be expected to use strategies such as whole-word recognition and/or cues from context, grammar, or pictures.'
http://dfe.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/teachingstyles/phonics/a0010240/criteria-for-assuring-high-quality-phonic-work

Guidance on choosing a phonically decodable book scheme
- For ease of use, the sequenced introduction of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in the scheme should follow that taught in the setting’s synthetic phonics (SP) or linguistic phonics (LP) programme as closely as possible.
- Alphabet code in the text should be cumulative, with previously taught code included along with newly taught code.
- The inclusion of words containing as yet untaught code should be very limited.
- Check that the scheme's emphasis is not on initial letters –transitivity needs to be well understood..
- Text should focus on GPCs, not larger units of sound such as onset and rime.
- Avoid schemes where eye-catching illustrations are the main attraction - with text used simply as a garnish.
- If the text includes pseudo words then check that they don't have 'illegal' English spellings.
- Avoid schemes where the illustrations have been deliberately designed to provide clues to the text content.
- Check that there are enough books in the scheme to allow adequate code practice-this is vital for 'slow to learn' students- supplement with books from a compatible scheme if necessary.
- Check that the text is written by a knowledgeable and enthusiastic SP/LP practitioner - it does make a discernable difference..

Of course, ALL books become 'decodable' once you've learnt the Alphabet Code!

Expert advice for listening to children read
http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1920&p=13552#p13552

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N.B. this is not a definitive list of phonically decodable book schemes.

www.phonicbooks.co.uk/
- Dandelion Readers: follow the Sounds~Write GPC introduction order -can be used with any linguistic phonics programme or Letters&Sounds.
- 'Launchers' first texts for beginners at Foundation stage -start at cvc level.
- Dandelion readers (6 books) for 'magic e'/split vowel reading practice
- Alba series.12 books specifically written to appeal to girls in KS2/3. Reading Age KS1 -start at cvc level
- Magic Belt. 12 books, a prequel to the Totem quest series -start at cvc level.
Review of Magic Belt http://literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-magic-belt-series-from-phonicbooks.html
- Totem series. 12 books specifically designed for older struggling readers age 8-14 / Reading Age KS1 -start at cvc level.
- Talisman series. 20 books specifically designed for older struggling readers age 8-14 / Reading Age KS1.

www.jollylearning.co.uk
Jolly Phonics readers: 4 levels of fiction and non-fiction books for beginning readers. Caution: these readers are designed to be read once all of Jolly Phonics basic code has been taught, not before.

Read Write Inc. OUP. Ruth Miskin's *story books and non-fiction books
http://www.oup.com/oxed/primary/rwi/transformingprogrammes
*Includes 7 sets of books, 75 books altogether, delightful stories and optional exercises for teaching before and after reading the story
- Ditty Books. first texts for absolute beginners.
- Read Write Inc. Fresh Start modules. These 'catch-up' workbooks (consumables) for students in Y5+ include age-appropriate text for reading practice.

Pearson's Phonics Bug Club. http://www.pearsonphonics.co.uk/BugClub/BugClub.aspx
Decodable books which follow the GPC introduction order of the DfE's 'Letters&Sounds'' programme. Caution: Do NOT confuse Pearson's Phonics Bug decodable books with Pearson's Bug Club NON-decodable whole language books for beginning readers.

OUP's Oxford Reading Tree (ORT) Floppy's Phonics.
http://www.oup.com/oxed/primary/oxfordreadingtree/resources/floppysphonics/newlook/
Matched to Letters and Sounds Phases 2 to 5. Caution: DO NOT confuse these new decodable first readers with the first Book Band levels (pink, red, yellow, blue..) of the recently reprinted ORT 'Classic' Biff, Chip and Kipper whole language books.

www.syntheticphonics.net
Sound Discovery: Little Phonics First books (for use with the Sound Discovery and the Jolly Phonics programme) / King Wizzit story books -best for 7 to 11 year olds who are poor readers – funny stories about kings, islands and dragons / Photocopiable Fold-it books. N.B. Now also published by Pearson. http://www.pearsonphonics.co.uk/SoundDiscovery/

http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/books.aspx
Sounds~Write readers - written to support Sounds~Write or any other linguistic phonics programme.
How to use S~W readers: http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/docs/how_to_use_sounds_write_readers.pdf
24 initial/basic code books following the S~W GPC introduction order -start at CVC level.
12 extended/advanced code books: 'These titles focus on particular sounds to give children plenty of practice of the most common spelling alternatives presented in each of the Extended Code Units'

http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/jerabooks.htm
Jera Books. 'Battle Cries', a comic books series specifically designed for older, struggling readers age 11+. ''Each book focuses on a particular sound and is deliberately contrived to contain multiple spellings of the sound''. Important -read the online Teachers' Guide before using these books: http://www.soundswrite.co.uk/documents/guide_to_battle_cries.pdf

www.piperbooks.co.uk/index.htm
Beginning/Advanced Reading Instruction (BRI / ARI). These books allow a slow introduction and passage through the Code; only five sounds introduced in the first three books, over 150 books in the whole scheme. 'BRI minimizes the number of letters used to 20--fewer than the number in the Alphabet. It also minimizes the number of words involved--around 100 in BRI 1 and 2, and not many more in BRI 3.' (Schutz BRI forum) New. MRI 'mature reading instruction' series for teens and adults.
BRI/ARI books are also available in Australia http://www.spearwoodpress.com.au

http://www.smartkids.co.uk/details.asp?pid=1665
Pocket Rockets for classroom use: The 18 booklets (flimsy paper) introduce the GPCs learnt at Phase 2 only of Letters and Sounds, 10 of each title in a set. These booklets are also available in Australia. Now available as Android app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pocketrocketandroid.com

www.societyforqualityeducation.org/stairway/readingmaterial.pdf
Canadian. Free reading material from the 'Stairway to Reading' programme, from simple sentences using CVC words to complete 'sound' stories - also suitable for dictations. Caution UK users: N. American sound-spellings

www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewforum.php?f=6
RRF's bank of free, decodable materials and games.

Free online e-books: a small selection of OUP's phonics books
http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Library/Index/?AgeGroup=3&BookType=Phonics&Book=eBooks
- age 4-5
http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Library/Index/?AgeGroup=4&BookType=Phonics&Book=eBooks
- age 5-6

www.phonicsinternational.com
Debbie Hepplewhite's online programme includes decodable text starting at CVC level- see 'I CAN READ'. Unit 1. is free to download. Follows the Jolly Phonics GPC introduction order.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bob-books-reading-magic-lite/id408873050?mt=8
App for iPad/ iPhone. Bob Books Reading Magic. CVC level, interactive decodable books, one free 'lite' book to download plus 2 to purchase.

http://www.readingchest.co.uk/home
A postal book rental service specialising in reading scheme books for children aged 4 to 9 years Caution: decodable books are available but many of the books stocked are whole language readers.

http://www.speld-sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=182
Australia SPELD-SA (Specific Learning Difficulties Association of South Australia) provide free books online which follow the Jolly Phonics GPC introduction order. N.B. a couple of these books contain words that some teachers may feel uncomfortable about young children reading e.g. 'bum' and 'spat'
SPELD also stock www.phonicbooks.co.uk/ and Jolly Phonics materials.
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10 reasons why beginning readers should only be given phonically decodable books for independent reading practice.

1. Only phonically decodable book schemes are consistent with the synthetic phonics reading method; they go from simple to complex, use only explicitly taught code and the illustrations are not deliberately designed to provide overt clues to text content. Taught code is used throughout words, rather than first letter emphasis, to ensure that transitivity is well understood. Sounding out is the only strategy required to read the words.

2. Whole-language reading scheme books give beginning readers a misleading idea of what reading entails i.e. that it is a memorising and (psycholinguistic) guessing game.

3. Phonically decodable books give beginning readers the necessary direct and sustained practice in newly taught code and skills to help develop reading stamina, fluency and confidence.

4. There is no way of knowing which particular children entering a reception class have poor visual memories or weak phonological learning ability. These children are likely to become struggling 'dyslexic' readers if whole-language books are used at first. Children with good visual memories plus a supportive home background may appear to do well, initially, with whole-language books, BUT see 5.

5. Decodable books help prevent the development of the sight word guessing habit. This harmful habit can be difficult to change when children get older and the brain less 'plastic'. Those with good visual memories will develop this habit quickly and easily through the use of predictable, repetitive text. Eventually their memory for whole words will reach its limit and if they haven't, in the meantime, been taught or deduced the alphabet code for themselves they will struggle to read advanced texts with novel words and no illustrations.

6. Whole language, repetitive texts can be tedious to read. Many beginning readers struggle to read the early levels (pink, red, yellow, blue) of Book Banded predictable texts, losing comprehension and confidence in the process. Both types of books can put a child off reading. 'Attitudes to reading in England are poor compared to those of children in many other countries' and 'Children in England read for pleasure less frequently than their peers in many other countries' (Pirls 2006) These findings are from the time when whole-language books were used as the basis for early reading instruction in nearly all schools. Ease of decoding from the earliest days by simply sounding out and blending gives children quick success, ensuring long term enthusiasm for reading.

7. The use of phonically decodable books is usually only necessary for a short period in the foundation stage. When taught well with synthetic phonics, most children learn the code quickly, begin to self-teach, and can then move to independently reading real books rather than being stuck for several years on whole language reading schemes with the restricted word count necessary to ensure adequate memorisation of the high frequency words.

8. Good spelling is aided by the use of decodables -see Spelling

9. Empirical research supports the use of phonically decodable books for initial reading practice: ‘The selection of text used very early in first grade may, at least in part, determine the strategies and cues children learn to use, and persist in using, in subsequent word identification.... In particular, emphasis on a phonics method seems to make little sense if children are given initial texts to read where the words do not follow regular letter-sound correspondence generalizations. Results of the current study suggest that the types of words which appear in beginning reading texts may well exert a more powerful influence in shaping children’s word identification strategies than the method of reading instruction’(Juel and Roper/Schneider. Reading Research Quarterly 18)

10. Parents easily understand the logic of phonically decodable books and are more able and willing to help their children practise reading at home.

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Reading Recovery's Book Bands, Cliff Moon's Individualised Reading, Hatcher's Graded booklist and the Catch Up Literacy booklist are all book leveling schemes based on the whole language notion of early reading - that is, beginners, or those requiring intervention, use globally memorised sight words, initial letter/s, picture and context clues to 'read'. In these schemes, books are leveled according to number of words on a line, the number of lines on a page or the number of high frequency words used and the degree of repetition, NOT on the phonic decodability of the text. For example, books in Pink Bookband (recommended for children aged 4-5), 'usually have no more than 10 pages with up to 5 words on a page' (ReadingChest/bookbands).

The 4th edition of Reading Recovery's 'Book Bands for Guided Reading' (2007) states in the introduction that, ''We have banded only those series produced by publishers specifically for Guided Reading. This excludes books intended for shared or independent use, and also series designed to provide practice with the decoding of certain phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and therefore more suited to a daily, discrete programme of phonic work''. Despite this, the big publishers (OUP, Pearsons...) have decided to place their new phonically decodable books for beginning readers in Book Band colour groups.

- for typical examples of whole-language text see (scroll down): http://www.rrf.org.uk/archive.php?n_ID=108&n_issueNumber=50

http://www.readingchest.co.uk/book-bands
This page gives some sample text from the whole language books Reading Chest stock for beginning readers (Pink level. age 4-5), all accompanied by a bold picture clue of course!
''This is a leopard''
''I have a little horse''
''They play guitars''
''We painted triangles''

(A)s they learn to master the alphabetic code, children should be given reading material that is well within their reach in the form of 'decodable books'... Using such books as part of the phonic programme does not preclude other reading. Indeed it can be shown that such books help children develop confidence and an appetite for reading more widely.' (Rose Report 2006. para 82)

Controlled text for independent reading makes a tremendous difference. We should only ask children to decode what we have already taught them. Introducing complexity at an early stage can lead to faulty reading strategies that take a concerted effort to correct.(Hirsch.T p18)

‘The selection of text used very early in first grade may, at least in part, determine the strategies and cues children learn to use, and persist in using, in subsequent word identification.... In particular, emphasis on a phonics method seems to make little sense if children are given initial texts to read where the words do not follow regular letter-sound correspondence generalizations. Results of the current study suggest that the types of words which appear in beginning reading texts may well exert a more powerful influence in shaping children’s word identification strategies than the method of reading instruction’(Juel and Roper/Schneider. Reading Research Quarterly 18)

http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/435/Green%20Eggs%20and%20Ham%20%20The%20case%20for%20Phonics.pdf
The case for decodable text.

Nurture a Reader: Leveled Books
http://nurtureareader.blogspot.com/2010 ... books.html

Real books designed to develop 'emergent' readers' fluency and confidence -use late into or on completion of a synthetic phonics (intervention) programme. Barrington Stoke http://www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/ Caution -do not use solely for 'silent reading'. It is essential that students are regularly heard reading some of the text aloud to ensure that they are decoding accurately and not skipping or substituting words.

The Place for Decodable Books and Real Books in KS1.

1.     The vast majority of beginning readers need phonically decodable words, sentences and books, fiction and non-fiction, for independent reading (decoding) practice (with support as necessary), alongside a systematic synthetic phonics classroom programme. This is to set automatic decoding habits in place and avoid children struggling to read words for which they haven’t learnt the code, which, as we know, can cause great anxiety, loss of comprehension and a fear of reading.
2.     A tiny minority of children enter YR already reading well –once it is established that they are not relying on sight word memorisation they should be offered real books at the correct level and with appropriate content from the onset. Most of these children will still benefit from being taken rapidly through a systematic synthetic phonics programme in order to teach them how to spell.
3.     A school's main decodable reading scheme should follow the GPC introduction order of the school's synthetic phonics programme as closely as possible. With experience teachers will become confident about mixing other decodable book schemes into the main scheme, and should be encouraged to do so to add variety to children’s decodable reading matter.
4.     Excellent classroom synthetic phonics teaching alongside decodable books should enable the vast majority of children to move smoothly on to reading real books and a variety of other natural text independently by the end of KS1 - and some much sooner than then.
5.     Whilst most children will be limited, initially, to phonically decodable books for independent reading practice, ALL KS1 children should be enveloped in a language rich environment in the classroom -for language development and comprehension purposes they should be read stories and poems and engage with beautiful picture books, fiction and non-fiction, throughout the school day.
6.     Good synthetic phonics teaching with decodable books shouldn’t take up much time in the early years, ‘It is multi-sensory and fun and can be achieved in 30 minutes a day, leaving several hours to be filled by child-initiated play, sand, water, painting, outdoor play, you name it.’
7.     Modern decodable book schemes can be just as attractive and interesting as real books for early readers. They are certainly preferable to the repetitive text found in many whole language scheme books and a far cry from the dull, Victorian ‘The cat sat on the hat’ type phonic books of yesteryear.
8.     Before making a judgement on the worth of phonically decodable books, possible detractors should first take a close look at one or more of the new book schemes, such as Read Write Inc. or Dandelion Books, AND use, or see in use, such a scheme with a class of beginning readers being taught by an experienced and enthusiastic synthetic phonics teacher.
9.     It must be acknowledged that a minority of children, even with the best synthetic phonics teaching, will be slow to become confident decoders for a variety of reasons (poor memory, low phonological learning ability, ESL, absence due to ill health…) They may need to continue with suitable decodable books for reading practice purposes after KS1.
10. Whilst the teaching of classroom synthetic phonics is not optimal still in perhaps the majority of schools, decodable books for intervention, suitable for older readers, will continue to be necessary.