Clicker’s decodable stories – supporting resources
In a recent blog post, I looked at how our new CVC decodable Clicker Books support a science of reading approach to phonics instruction. Today I want to explore some of the additional Clicker resources on LearningGrids that can be used alongside the decodable stories.
For each of the books (Tig in Mud, Bug in a Bin, and Peg and Bob), there is a series of activities related to:
- Pre-reading revision
- Text comprehension and vocabulary extension
- Decoding skills
Decodable stories: Pre-reading revision
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, it is important to use decodable books that are based on sound-spellings that readers have already been taught. The Letters & Words Clicker Board can be used before any of the books to revise and reinforce the letters and sounds that will be covered in the text. The CVC words from the story are also included on the Clicker Board to practice segmenting and blending the words before they come across them in the Clicker Book.
The Key Words Matching Set reinforces the CVC words in the decodable stories' text.
Text comprehension and vocabulary extension
Talking about the plot and exploring the children’s understanding is an important part of using decodable stories. The stories and pictures have been authored so that there are things to talk about and ways to extend vocabulary, even starting on the cover – “Who do you think Tig is?” “What do you think will happen to Tig?”
Once students have read the stories, they can use the Tell the Story activity or the Clicker Board sequencing activity to retell the story in their own words.
Decoding skills
A Connect Set and a Sentence Set are also included, allowing students to rewrite the story while practicing their decoding skills. With the Connect Set, students need to sound out the last word to choose the correct CVC word to complete the sentence.
The Sentence Set provides another opportunity to decode the text from the decodable stories, as well as reinforce an understanding of sentence structure. To make it a greater challenge for some students, the model sentence could be changed to a spoken model so that students have to listen to the sentence and then decode the word choices to recreate the sentence.
The Key Words Talk Set can also be used for decoding practice, either before or after they read the Clicker Book. Initially students may need to record themselves segmenting and blending the words (/c/ /ă/ /t/ - cat). But with enough decoding practice, orthographic mapping will allow most children to read the words from sight – without having to sound them out each time.
Click on the links below to see the CVC decodable stories and their supporting Clicker Sets in LearningGrids:
Be sure to check out the Sounds & Letters category on LearningGrids for many other phonics related activities. Here are some other resources you might find helpful:
