I'd like to initiate a conversation about the use of decodables. When I began this work (around 2013) they were just making their way into literacy instruction - now the market is flooded with them and I regularly see questions about how to move learners onto regular text. Decodables were about providing text that early learners could decode (rather than guess), thus facilitating left to right decoding and use of phoneme-grapheme correspondences. However, once the concept of 'how words work' (not all code knowledge) is learned to automaticity, then the brain will generalise - that is an 'efficiency' feature of the human brain. I suspect that staying with decodables stalls that process because it embeds only one type of 'cue' for phoneme/ knowledge retrieval which learners then have to override if they are to read real text. We must provide the 'real life' reading context (cues) for learners.

In staying with decodables, (in our ignorance) we risk stalling an older student’s learning. I know many reading this have learned other phonics programs and integrate aspects with That Reading Thing. What if, embedded in TRT, is deeper understanding of how to work effectively with inbuilt brain mechanisms as they mature? And what if integrating approaches and materials from early years approaches undermines that? If we are to use TRT well, we have to override our own background knowledge acquired in early years programs. Just like our students, it can feel uncomfortable and unknown in the short term. But oh what depth it yields!

I have a student who, on an alphabet code test, is not able to recall the sounds associated with many of the graphemes beyond the 'transparent' (a-b-c) element even though he has already had 3 years of small group work using an early years linguistic phonics program. Somewhere in the back of his head is at least some exposure to all the code. Instead of repeatedly exposing him to more decodables, I use the TRT approach which includes reading with an age appropriate book. And I see evidence of long term retention of spellings of sounds (graphemes) that we have paused to focus on during the reading.

Effort and retrieval (with effective error correction) embed learning way more securely than repeated exposure. The ease of decodables can feel (to the learner and tutor) that learning is occurring quickly - but it is not. Effort and retrieval on the other hand can feel like no progress is being made but test children using effort/retrieval or repeated exposure and a month later the former are stronger. Cognitive psychology research into learning validates That Reading Thing’s approach to reading (and spelling with That Spelling Thing).

Endless repeated exposure, whether with decodables for reading or sound sorts for spelling, are the same as massed learning/rereading. Like a brand new cheap t-shirt, they look brilliant in the first week but are unrecognisable in a few months. We need to stretch ourselves and use all that TRT points us to (and TST).

• Use real text, even if small chunks.
• Know your learner well, know which words they will easily decode and which ones will need a sound scaffolded.
• Always, always work with longer words.
• Chunk the syllables, get them comfortable with saying syllables that don’t stand alone as words.
• A couple of successes with these, and everything changes - including accuracy with smaller words.

Always stretch, read, talk, create (write). Our students need the same learning we need to do ourselves. Everyone benefits.

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Back to Tricia:

• Read more about choosing text for That Reading Thing students.
  
• Read more about adapting authentic text
• Is it ever ok to use decodables? Yes - there is decodable text built into every Foundation Level of TRT. We want students to practice but not get bogged down in text that is too simple for them.
• Decodable readers, beyond what already exists in That Reading Thing, can be valuable for young people with cognitive and other complex learning disabilities, but they are not for the vast majority of students referred to That Reading Thing. Get in touch if you think a student fits that more complex profile.