Different types of texts are important throughout young children’s development from emergent to beginning and transitional readers— from the pre-K years through second grade. Decodable, authentic, and predictable are the most familiar types of texts, though other important categories include transitional and easy, which occasionally overlap with authentic texts. Research supports the use of all of these texts with young learners, but the degree of emphasis on each type varies at different points in young children’s literacy development.
Importantly, decodable texts are now a staple of beginning reading instruction. However, an overriding question that many primary teachers raise is, “How and when should you transition away from decodable texts?” This article will describe the relationships between texts and young learners that should help guide this decision.
Before exploring the transition from using primarily decodable and easier texts to more natural, authentic texts, it’s important to describe the nature of these types of texts:
- Decodable texts are short texts that are written to contain several examples of the phonic/spelling patterns children are learning in their word study and reading instruction. They provide an opportunity for children to apply new and previously-learned phonics knowledge to reading in context, as well as gaining confidence as readers because they learn to trust in the link between learning a phonics skill and unlocking words in a book.
- Authentic texts usually have more involved plots and complex information; they are written by children’s authors whose use of syntax and vocabulary support their artistic goals. Usually read to young children, authentic texts can engage children’s motivation to read and their interests, emotions, and imaginations as they expand their vocabularies, language, and knowledge. Some children’s authors also write books for young readers with an eye to reducing complexity. In these books the story or topic is strongly supported by the illustrations.
- Predictable texts are usually read to young children and support important phonological awareness skills such as rhyme and alliteration. Written with familiar storylines and simple syntactic structures, they are motivating experiences for young children, helping them learn how books work and engaging their interest in reading. As children reread these texts for themselves, the repeated words or phrases also reinforce sight word development and scaffold development of a variety of word recognition strategies.
- Transitional and easy texts include interesting stories and/or information, more natural language patterns, systematic repetition of high frequency words, and within each text, a wider range of phonic and spelling patterns that have been studied. In the table below, compare Instructional Level Text examples with Decodable Text examples. The Instructional texts—representing transitional and easy texts—contain a greater proportion of high frequency words and words of more than one syllable. Some words, such as symbol and characters, need to be introduced and discussed before reading.
Research: Determining the Complexity of Texts
Research has identified a number of text- and word-level characteristics that determine the readability or complexity of each of these types of texts. These characteristics may be distilled into a few categories that correlate highly with oral reading fluency:
- Word Meaning: The age at which most common word meanings are acquired and the word’s frequency of occurrence in oral language. Older students can learn to read a word with a more elevated word-meaning demand that occurs less frequently in oral language.
- Word Structure: Some words have a higher decoding demand, such as having less predictable letter-sound correspondences and a higher number of syllables
- Sentence Length and Complexity: Longer sentences are usually syntactically more complex.
For any particular text, teachers are advised to also consider children’s background knowledge, multilingualism, and other cultural, social, and interest levels in determining appropriateness.
Teachers: Determining the Appropriateness of Texts
Decisions about appropriate texts are based on understanding the relationships between reading developmental level, spelling or orthographic knowledge, and types and complexity of texts.
The table below can be a guide to this understanding and the appropriate initial placement for children. It presents the types of information that are helpful in determining where a child falls along the continuum of literacy development and what types of texts may be effective and appropriate for supporting continued development. The chart includes Lexile scores because they are currently the most frequently-used metric for determining text complexity and are based on the categories mentioned above that determine readability or complexity. The Lexile range for each developmental level gives teachers an entry point into considering the range of texts that may be appropriate for children at that level.
Initial literacy assessments of young children include letter and sound knowledge, and for children who are able to apply this basic knowledge to spelling, their efforts are a valuable guide to determining developmental level—and as the table illustrates, the corresponding Lexile range of texts. Spelling is a good indicator of a learner’s underlying knowledge about word structure—what they have learned about the representation of consonants and short and long vowels. Spelling thus reveals the information that children use and apply when they read words.
By mid-first grade—when obtained in a purposeful reading-for-meaning situation—rate is a very good indicator of word recognition automaticity (sight vocabulary) and phrasing ability. While the table shows the approximate words correct per minute (WCPM) beginning at mid-first grade, it also includes the simpler words per minute (WPM) measure as a means of determining the minimal rate at which a child needs to read in order to make progress at a given text level.
Evidence of the Right Amount of Challenge in Texts
While decodable texts are closely aligned to the specific phonic and spelling elements children are learning, you may continue to use them throughout first and into second grade. In the meantime, however, how can you determine when children are able to attempt specific transitional, easy, or authentic texts? The right amount of challenge is represented by a child’s instructional reading level.
Instructional-level texts are just a little bit beyond what children can read independently because we want them to practice their phonics and word recognition skills, as well as their thinking skills and developing comprehension strategies. Instructional-level texts are those that children can:
- Read orally with 90%–94% word recognition accuracy after a brief book introduction.
- Read with 75%–89% comprehension. (Morris et al., 2013)
At each developmental point, the Lexile ranges provided in the table are a good place to begin in identifying texts for instructional-level teaching in small groups. You may also find that you need to select texts above a particular range; remember, these ranges are an entry point.
When selecting a transitional/easy or authentic text for a child’s independent-level reading, the Lexile range is again a good entry point. Aim for texts where children can:
- Read orally with 98%–100% word recognition accuracy.
- Read with 90%–100% comprehension.
Supporting Children’s Transition to Transitional/Easy and Authentic Texts: A Perspective
As this blog has described, there are a number of factors to consider. Over time, however, teachers internalize these many factors that make texts complex—for example, the length of the text, the difficulty of the words, the syntactic complexity of the sentences, the size and placement of the text, the content, the vocabulary, and the genre. And when they do, they come to rely less on these classification systems when choosing books for teaching children how to read. There is also support in the way a good reading and writing curriculum is structured. For example, in Into Reading, transitional and easy texts are supported by appropriate decodable texts. In the meantime, it’s appropriate to use texts in the appropriate Lexile range along with good judgment to find books that young readers can read and want to read.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.
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HMH Into Reading is a K–6 literacy curriculum that is grounded in research and can support teachers in transitioning students away from decodable texts.
References
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Fitzgerald, J., Elmore, J., Hiebert, E.H., Koons, H., Bowen, K., Sanford-Moore, E.E., & Stenner, A.J. (2016). Examining text complexity in the early grades. Phi Delta Kappan, 97, 60–65. https://kappanonline.org/fitzgerald-elmore-hiebert-reading-examining-text-complexity-in-the-early-grades/
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Morris, D., Trathen, W., Frye, E. M., Kucan, L., Ward, D., Schlagal, R., & Hendrix, M. (2013). The role of reading rate in the informal assessment of reading ability. Literacy Research and Instruction, 52(1), 52–64. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19388071.2012.702188
Morris, D., Trathen, W., Gill, T., Schlagal, R., Ward, D., & Frye, E. M. (2017). Assessing reading rate in the primary grades (1–3). Reading Psychology, 38(7), 653–672. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02702711.2017.1323057
Saha, N., & Cutting, L. (2019). Exploring the use of network meta-analysis in education: examining the correlation between ORF and text complexity measures. Annals of Dyslexia (2019), 69, 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-019-00180-y
Templeton, S. (2023). Spelling: Theory, assessment, and pedagogy. In R. Tierney, F. Rizvi, K. Ercikan, & G. Smith (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education (4th ed.), Vol. 7: Literacies and languages education (D. Yaden & T. Rogers, eds.) pp. 374-387. Oxford, GB: Elsevier. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.07053-6.
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