Carissa Taylor: Education

Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Decodable Books - Round Two

I hope you and your kiddos are doing well <3 Here are some more free learning-from home resources for your budding readers!

I wanted to get this second round of decodable books posted ages ago, but 2020 being what it is, life got in the way. Regardless, here they are at last! My first set of early readers focused on the Long E sound, and combinations of Long E and Long U as well as Short A, Short O, and Short I combinations.

The phonics readers I'm sharing today each focus primarily on one vowel sound:

Short A

Short E

Short I

Short O

Long I

I've played around with various narratives and styles this time, and have tried to incorporate more STEM concepts into the readers, including a read-together non-fiction book.

Like last time, I've striven to make these books 99% decodable for your kiddos, and have listed the letter sounds and the few "tricky" sight words they'll need to know on the second page of each book.

I'm always looking to improve, so let me know what you think!

help me keep these readers free for whoever needs them

Click on the images below to view a pdf version of the book, which should be suitable for tablet or smartphone. Let me know if you have any troubles downloading, or if you'd like a different format!

Cam Adapts a Ramp

pdf

This book is very short, so it's ideal for a beginning reader. Do note that it includes the word "adapt" -- which people with certain accents pronounce using a schwa rather than a Short A. To make things easier for your kiddo, I recommend pronouncing the word with a Short A while reading this.

Phonics Focus: Short A

Word Count: 43

Sight Words: 4

Crop Bot and Cod

pdf

This book is another that is designed for your just-getting-started reader. It also includes a touch of chemistry and biology in the storyline, so your kiddo can build a little STEM knowledge along the way!

Phonics Focus: Short O

Word Count: 105

Sight Words: 6

A Trip for Siskins

pdf

This is a narrative non-fiction book about birds and the seven continents. It's designed for you to read together with your child. There are decodable sections for your kiddo to read, while you'll read the other sections. You can pick-and-choose how much of the supplementary informational text you want to read aloud to your child based on their interest level and your time constraints.

Note that the file size is fairly large (80MB) for this one, so here is a link to a lower-res version as well.

Phonics Focus: Short I

Word Count: 155

Sight Words: 12

NOTE: The non-fiction sections in this book are purposefully written using fairly advanced phrasing. I've done this as it's important for children to become accustomed to hearing textbook-type language spoken aloud. It's not something we often think to do but is critical for building their oral-auditory STEM-oriented literacy before they encounter this type of writing on their own.

The Trek

pdf

In "The Trek" your child will try to guide the main character along the correct paths to reach their friend, using the written clues the friend left behind. They'll likely learn the names of some plants and animals along the way too, so it's a bit STEM-oriented.

It does incorporate a few words with tricky endings such as -ed, -edge, and -ettle, so this one's best for readers who already have a fair amount of practice with their short vowels, CVC, and CCVC words.

Phonics Focus: Short E
plus these endings:
-ed / -edge / -ettle

Word Count: 145

Sight Words: 11

White

pdf

This book follows the story of two children who live in a colorless world, but who discover the secret to bringing the color back into it. It's designed for readers who already have extensive practice with all the short vowel sounds, and who are learning the various Long I spellings.

Phonics Focus: Long I

Word Count: 257

Sight Words: 16

Six Kids on Bandit Island

pdf
kindle

(Chapter Book)

This is a chapter book designed for readers who are comfortable with common high frequency words and all the short vowel sounds. Each chapter is approximately 250-400 words, and there are 14 chapters, for a total of approximately 5,600 words.

Phonics Focus: short a and short i focus
(other short vowels too), all hard consonants,
th, ch, sh, qu, wh

Word Count: 5,600

Chapters: 14

High-Frequency Words: 32

Tricky Words: island, fire, OK

When a storm hits a ship on a day trip to Picnic Island, the six kids suddenly find themselves without a Captain. Adrift on the sea, they finally crash land, but it's not the island they were aiming for, and all their food and water was destroyed in the storm. How will they survive?

The book is available as a PDF and as a Kindle .mobi file. I should mention that the Kindle file arranges the illustrations and captions somewhat oddly, so it's not the ideal format for this book. However, if you are looking to have flexibility with the font face and font size, the Kindle version is the one for you!

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I hope you and your kiddos enjoy these readers! Be sure to check out the first 5 readers I posted if you're working on your Long E sound, or need some Short Vowel combo phonics books. I'm hoping to get out another few readers, including one for the Short U sound, a few even more basic books, and a decodable novella soon. But I also have another side project in the works so we will see how soon I can get to the readers!

If you're looking for a list of all the readers I've completed thus far, I have compiled them in this Master List.

If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear from you! email me at (( carissawritesthings )) @ (( gmail )) . (( com ))

<3 <3 <3

You can find me on social media here:

If you read and enjoyed the books, I would love your help keeping them free for those in need. I'm going to have to pay for to a new server for my next batch of books, but I want to keep the books free, so any donations would be so appreciated, no matter how small!

Monday, April 27, 2020

Early Readers

Now that we're doing distance learning due to coronavirus, one of the things my kiddo has been missing during "school at home" is reading the daily home readers our school provided.

We've found a few great first readers online but I wanted more early readers that were decodable and fit the specific sounds and reading level he's doing in his phonics program.

We started playing around with silly sentences on our fridge and we had so much fun, I eventually turned a few of them into digital books. I wanted to share them with all of you, as I know a lot of us are in the same "school from home" boat. If your child is learning to read in Kindy / Prep or Year One, these ebook readers are for you!

(P.S. - that's Kindergarten and First Grade for all my U.S. folks!)

I've had a lot of fun making these, and my kiddos and I are already in the porcess of developing more! If you'd like to know when I have more available, you can sign up here:

All these are available as free .pdf files, and are formatted landscape for maximum readability on your smartphone or tablet. If you'd like a kindle or epub file, let me know!

Enjoy!

<3

Kindergarten Early Readers

Our school uses the Get Reading Right systematic synthetic phonics program, so I've designed most of these decodable readers to fit that phonics sequence. They are all .pdf files, but if you'd like a kindle or .epub file, drop me a message and I can probably make you one!

Short Vowels: A O

If your child just started kindy, they are likely in the early stages of their phonics reading program. At our school, that's Get Reading Right's Basic Code . The first unit focuses on the letter sounds made by the consonants S M C T G P and the short vowel sounds A O and the camera words I, the, was, to, are, she, the. If they are working on those words and sounds, these first decodable books are written for them to read on their own!

Sam and Pom-Pom

I have such fond memories of the first books I read by myself, with just a few letters and sight words. It felt like such an accomplishment. Hope your kiddos like this reader!

Short Vowels: A I

I have one book that follows the Jolly Phonics Programme sequence of letter sounds, as I know a lot of you are using that phonics progression, and it's what I started my oldest on in preschool. For this emergent reader, your child would need to be able to read the consonants S T P N and the short vowel sounds A I, and be learning the early tricky words the, was, she.

Ann the Ant

This book about a little ant dreaming of her name up in lights restricts itself to a very few letter sounds, so it's suitable for new readers just beginning to learn phonics.

Drop me an email at { carissawritesthings } { @ } { gmail } { .com } if you have any trouble and I'll send you a copy!

Year One (First Grade)
Early Readers

My child's school uses the Get Reading Right synthetic phonics program, so I wrote these books to fit with that sequence of teaching letter sounds. By the beginning of Year One, students will have already learned all the hard consonants and all the short vowel sounds, as well as a fair amount of camera words (that's "sight words" for all of you in the US!). In Year One, they focus on learning the different spellings of the long vowel sounds, starting with the long E sound. Get Reading Right has their phonics sequence and camera word lists for their Advanced Code (Year One) in the free resources section of their website, so check it out if you're curious where your child is at.

These books are all landscape-oriented .pdf files for your computer, tablet, or smartphone, but if you'd like a kindle or .epub file, email me and I can probably make you one!

Long E Sound Family

EE EA -Y _E (also: -E_E IE -EY)

If your child is at the beginning of year one, they'll likely be learning the first phase of the Get Reading Right Advanced Code at school. That means a focus on the long E letter sound family.
All the early readers below focus on the various spellings of the long E sound.

Deep Beneath

I wrote this first reader in the early days of our social distancing due to COVID-19. Our beaches here in Australia had just closed. When I sat down to write my little guy a couple ee / ea sentences about an imaginary seapony, I ended up with a story about working through the grief of our newly quarantined world, and about finding joy closer to home.

Grubby the Dung Beetle

This early reader was a special pet project between my son and I. The book is, in a way, my coming-to-terms with the fact that yes, my kid is obsessed with poo ... and you know what? Let's run with it, shall we?
... and maybe learn a little about North American animals and nutrient cycles on the way? ;o)

Due to the subject matter of the book, YMMV. Reader beware: poo puns and dung jokes abound within these pages. I also introduce the grapheme OO, which is technically out of sequence in the Get Reading Right program. But hey, if your kid is like mine, "poo" was one of the first words they learned to read and write ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Queen's Feast

This reader focues on the EE sound family but also is designed to incorporate many of the camera words from Units 1-5 of the Advanced Code of the Get Reading Right program.