Free Decodable Books for Kindergarten

Do you find yourself looking for decodable books for kindergarten? I spent years creating a bundle of decodable texts aligned to the Science of Reading approach and today I’m sharing 50 quick check stories with you!

The Importance of Decodable Books for Kindergarten

Every single elementary child and teacher should have access to decodable readers. I use these texts to practice essential phonics skills like decoding CVC words and even high-frequency words. For decades, teachers have been provided leveled and predictable texts. Many early readers are encouraged to guess what a word might be based on the predictable sentence structure, the illustration or photo, and the first letter. We want to step away from guessing and teach our students to pay attention to every letter in the word. Young readers shouldn’t move their eyes from the text to the illustration in order to understand what is written. 

Unlike leveled texts, decodable texts will include very few high frequency words and focus on words with phonics skills that you have introduced to that point. Decodable books for kindergarten are essential when aligning your teaching strategies to the Science of Reading approach.

How to Use Your Decodable Books for Kindergarten

Spoiler alert… I have some ready for you! Kindergarten students will love using these at home, during small group time, or as an early finisher activity! For Kindergarten, you will want to start with the alphabet set and introduce more of the rule books later on in the year. You can follow a kindergarten teacher’s guide or your curriculum if you have one and introduce the books as you introduce a particular school. I wait until my kindergarten students know the majority of the letter sounds and have practiced blending and segmenting with me in a small group or one-on-one setting. Remember, that research continues to support that we should practice phonemic awareness skills from preschool through second grade so it’s important to build on that understanding every single day with and without decodable texts.

Decodable Books for First Grade

Of course, these books can also easily be used with first grade students. Most students enter first grade with a strong understanding of short vowel sounds, a variety of sight words, and some are reading whole books fluently. The bundle of books I’ve created use the UFLI Foundations Decodable Text Guide to help students practice new phonic elements, such as CVCe, vowel teams, open and closed syllables, and more! You could consider having one book for each student or placing them in a basket in your reading corner. My early finishers love to pull them out. I add to the basket as the year goes on and we practice each skill. 

Ways to Use Your Decodable Books with Second Grade Students

I’ve even used these printable books with my second grade students. They love to use them for a quick check of their phonics knowledge and to build reading confidence. In fact, my second grade small groups are always begging me to let them sit with a partner on the floor to practice these. Consider sending these home for extra practice along with nonfiction books. These books help parents understand what phonics skills their child should have mastered by that point. 

Ideas to Help Multilingual Learners with Decodable Books

I teach a free Parent English Class twice a week for my district. Many of my students are able to hold conversations with other parents just like our students can. However, most of them have missed out on key phonics skills. For example, they haven’t learned ways to decode irregular words. They haven’t been taught the strategies to decode unfamiliar words. I follow the UFLI phonics scope and sequence to help them understand the difference between short vowels and long vowels. We stay away from predictable books. A leveled book can be frustrating because even though it may be created for an emergent reader, the text may actually be appropriate for a 4th grade student. I always look for decodable passages and stay away from any repetitive texts. 

How I Use These Books

Let me begin by showing you the different ways that I use these books with my students. I’m currently working with preschool all the way through 8th grade students. Again, I sometimes even pull these out for my Parent English class!

Small-Group Literacy Lessons

Our small group time is devoted to developing foundational reading skills. After my students have a good understanding of phonemes and how several are spelled, we can begin reading decodable words. I’m often asked at conferences if I wait until students know every single letter or phoneme before I start teaching them how to read. You don’t have to! Once my students know /l/ /o/ and /g/, they are ready to segment and blend the word log. If they know that /l/ is spelled with an l, /o/ is spelled with an o, and /g/ is spelled with a g, they are ready to practice reading and writing the word. 

orthographic mapping

This is the perfect time to promote orthographic mapping using word mapping mats. As students learn to recognize and identify more sounds and letters, they can add more and more sounds to the word. 

For these decodable books, I do wait until they can produce the most common phoneme for each letter. Today you will receive the short vowel set in this series of decodable books. I like to go over the front of the book and the back of the book with my students. The word list on the back is the perfect guide for what words students could be mapping. You’ve probably seen the word mats I use. My kids absolutely love them but you don’t have to use anything fancy. You can do this with just a whiteboard and a marker!

I begin by talking about the mouth articulation photos on the front and if necessary, we even pull out a mirror to practice how our mouth should be formed. Sometimes I’ll read the first story with them. I like to model decoding a word I don’t understand. It is important that the students realize what they should do when they stumble upon unknown words. Decodable books have to contain a few high frequency or “tricky words”. I actually prefer the term “heart words”.

model decoding

If I’m reading aloud and come to the word “see”, I might pause and think about this out loud. “Hmmm… is this /s/ /e/ /e/?” (Emphasize a short vowel sound twice.) You are likely to have some students who will shout out the word. If not, you can explain that you actually do remember that two e’s spell the long e sound and that’s how you can read the word see. Explain to students that if they come to a word they are unable to decode and do not recognize, they should show it to you.

You can help them map the word on a whiteboard. If I was mapping the word “see” I would draw two boxes and ask students to write how they think it would be spelled. If they wrote an s and than an e, I would explain that in this word the long vowel sound is spelled with two e’s. Since we haven’t learned that during our phonics instruction yet, we can add a heart above the word. Later, we can erase the heart when we understand that rule. 

I can promise you that your students will get it! If they seem ready, you can show them that thee are some other words spelled in the same way. For example, you can erase the s and change it to a b and ask them to attempt to read the word. Students who can rapidly name letter sounds may be able to read the change when you erase the b and add fr. 

This is just one way that decodable books for kindergarten play a big role when I’m creating my lesson plan for my small group time!

Scope and Sequence

As mentioned earlier, these books follow UFLI’s suggested scope and sequence when it comes to introducing phonics skills. I tend to move fairly rapidly with my students. Remember, you don’t have to wait until students know every letter sound before we start practicing decoding. Once my students know /l/, /o/, and /g/, they will practice writing and decoding “log” while in a small group with me. I sometimes even do this with the whole class using my whiteboard.

I like to introduce /h/ next so that we can practice manipulating the word by exchanging the /l/ for /h/. My students are usually so excited to read the word “hog” now. We continue to add more sounds and practice writing and reading simple CVC words in a similar way. You can usually follow along with your school’s curriculum when deciding what sounds to practice first. This is just an example of the order I’ve used in the past.

Parent Tips

Parents can really help teachers by practicing these skills at home. The issue is that many parents may encourage the wrong sound. For example, many parents will say “buh” instead of saying /b/. It is important that we share ideas and tips with parents to help them enforce the sound correctly. I also like to encourage them to play games and develop a love and excitement for reading with their children. Each of the decodable books contains a section of “Parent Tips” so that children can receive extra practice at home. 

Should You Assign Homework?

The longer I’ve been a parent, the more I’ve despised homework! Ha! 

The truth is that our students are at school for such a long time that I hate to require too much of them when they get home. HOWEVER, I do feel that it is important that we encourage reading practice. These books are perfect for this! The kids take one book home. I encourage them to practice one story at a time. They can also practice reading previous stories.

When they feel confident, they bring the book to me. If they can read it without assistance or pausing too long to decode words, they earn a sticker on the front from me on top of the story they’ve read. In the past, I’ve asked parents to add a sticker or have their child color the story in the Table of Contents in the inside cover when they can read it fluently. This lets me know that they are ready for me to begin testing them. I also like to ask a few quick comprehension questions. Even through these are quick check stories to practice skills, you can still see if they understand what they read.

Low Prep

One of the key features of these books is that they are ULTRA low prep! They might look a little wonky when you first print them but I did that on purpose! Teachers simply print the pages front and back, fold, and staple. You won’t have to cut or assemble these. They are ready to go straight from the printer! I’ve included detailed photo instructions to make this easier.

Where to Find Decodable Books

If you have hung with me this long, then you definitely deserve a treat! You will receive 50 quick check stories to try with your students. That means you are getting 5 books with 10 stories each. This is just a sample of some of the decodable books for kindergarten. Each book contains parent tips, mouth articulation photos, segmenting and blending ideas, and stories to practice the essential skill. These were created for my newsletter subscribers. You can sign up here!

Mega Bundle for the Year

This is the ULTIMATE deal! Of course, you can purchase the sets individually. For example, you may want just the alphabet set or perhaps you want to focus on digraphs. However, the growing mega bundle will eventually have 100 books with 10 stories each. That’s 1,000 decodable stories!