At Kings Beach Elementary, we continue to serve students who struggle with literacy and perform significantly below grade level due to a lack of aligned, specialized intervention materials. As a Special Education I strive to follow the Science of Reading practices. While we currently implement the Sonday System, which is an evidence based, multisensory phonics, explicit curriculum. Our program lacks the essential decodable readers necessary to practice learned skills with high interest text and lower readability. Which can bridge the gap between isolated phonics instruction and fluent reading. Decodable books are a critical component of the Science of Reading, as they provide students with disabilities the opportunity to practice specific phonetic patterns in a controlled, successful context. This project aims to acquire a comprehensive library of decodable texts that directly align with the Sonday scope and sequence. By ensuring students encounter books that have words they are able to decode, we can foster mastery and long-term reading success. This grant would allow me to supplement our current reading and spelling curriculum and continue to build my decodable library with appealing nonfiction text and a series of books that are at the blend, digraph and suffix level.
The primary benefit of this project is providing students with access to decodable readers that focus on and reinforce specific phonics skills and letter-sound correspondences taught in our curriculum. These materials allow our students with special needs to practice their reading skills in a controlled and predictable way, which is essential for enhancing fluency and offering opportunities for a deeper level of comprehension. By ensuring students are matched with text at their exact instructional level, we are boosting their reading confidence and ultimately supporting early reading success for our most vulnerable learners. This grant will provide critical reading support for all students at Kings Beach Elementary who require intensive reading interventions and support through Special Education services in Kindergarten through 5th grade.
The success of these decodable readers is most clearly seen in the increased engagement and eagerness of our students as they progress through a series. There is an important shift in their confidence when they realize they can successfully read these "chapter books." Additionally, the excitement for reading and the success of the program is documented through consistent progress monitoring and measurable improvements in students' decoding and reading fluency skills. The addition of new series and non-fiction texts through this grant will allow us to continue this upward trajectory in student learning, providing diverse and engaging content that reinforces their skills. Ultimately, the success of this project is defined by giving our students the tools and the confidence they need to be successful in their own unique reading journeys.
Decodable readers provide an easy-to-use and engaging tool for teachers, paraprofessionals, and other support staff working with students who struggle with reading. These readers are specifically designed for one-on-one or small-group settings, making them ideal for a Special Education environment and intensive reading intervention groups. To ensure effectiveness, these decodable books will be taught in conjunction with the Sonday System, which follows an implementation schedule of 35-minute sessions, 4–5 times per week. By utilizing these readers within our existing small-group structure (typically 4–5 students per group), we can provide the consistent, targeted practice necessary for our students to master phonetic principles and transition into fluent readers.
Yes, this grant will be shared across our site to benefit the entire K–5 Special Education team. These decodable readers will provide all special education teachers with research-aligned tools for students who have not yet responded to other reading interventions. As our struggling readers begin to improve their decoding skills and fluency, they are much more likely to transfer these successes into the general education setting, allowing them to better access the core curriculum alongside their peers. This also ties into our participation of our Special Education PLCs and our site grade level PLCs.
additional funding would be needed for years to come.
None at this time. The amount required for the decodable readers outweighs any other financial sources available.