3 easy ways to practice reading fluency with decodable books

Plenty of deliberate and frequent practice is required to build the reading fluency skills of students learning to decode. What is deliberate practice? Deliberate practice is goal-oriented and devoted to the improvement of a skill. Whether the student’s goal is accuracy, automaticity, or both, daily and deliberate practice is vital to their reading fluency success.

After teaching students a specific phonics skill, it is important to make sure that the student has plenty of practice reading words, phrases, and sentences that incorporate the taught skill. This is where the use of our Decodable Phonics Mini Books is both effective and efficient for reading fluency practice! Over 50 one-page, foldable, prep-free books are included. Each book focuses on a specific phonics skill, and includes the following three pages:

• Word Reading: Students will read the list of words that contain the focus phonics pattern. This page helps build reading accuracy, fluency, and confidence. The word lists are also excellent for vocabulary development and discussion!
• Sentence Level Reading: Students read a list of sentences that feature words with the focus phonics pattern. This page helps students develop phrasing and reading fluency at the sentence-level.
• Passage Reading: A short and manageable story is found on the back page of every mini book. The story includes a short plot that has words focused on the book’s target phonics skill. This page is helpful in allowing students to practice reading with intonation, pacing, and comprehension.

How can you use the Decodable Phonics Mini Books for reading fluency practice in your classroom? This post will share three easy routines and ideas that you can use to provide deliberate practice with accuracy and automaticity of the phonics skills you are teaching your students. Here we go!

take-home mini books for reading fluency

One of my favorite ways to use the Decodable Phonics Mini Books is to send them home with students to practice and read to their families! The books are the perfect take-home resource because each book prints on just one side of a piece of a paper. These no-prep decodable books can be collected by students throughout the year and kept at home as a little library!

Students will love taking the book home to read, practice, and then keep forever! Parents love that the books are simple, straightforward, and build in fluency skills. Students move from the word level to the sentence level to the passage level, therefore scaffolding their skills and building their reading confidence.

If you’re looking for a take-home bag to use with your students, my favorite bags are the Read-n-Go bags from SeatSacks. *You can use the code READMD15 and take 15% off of any Read-n-Go product! Why do I love Read-n-Go bags? They’re extremely durable, wipe down easily, hang up in cubbies and lockers, and feature a clear front side. The clear front side allows me to quickly see if students put the book in their bag to take home, returned the book, or need their bag cleaned out.

independent reading practice

Keeping a designated book baggie or book bin for each child within the classroom is an easy way to make sure they have access to decodable books that they can use to practice their reading fluency. Simply add one of the free labels (available at the end of this blog post) and slide it into the Read-n-Go Book Bag.

When it’s time for independent reading time, students simply grab their book baggie and head to their assigned spot in the room to practice their reading skills. (Yes! Students still need practice time to work on decoding skills and phrasing throughout the day. Simply replace your leveled readers with decodable books that include phonics skills your students need to work on. This routine helps to integrate deliberate practice into your school day.)

Have students keep the phonics mini books in their book baggies, adding one new book at a time. Set the expectation that they will read recent books first and then spend time reviewing their skills with previous books. Students can also use their book baggies to read the Phonics Mini Books with a partner. You can pair a stronger reader with a growing reader in order to provide a model for decoding and accuracy, and allow the strong reader to work on pacing and expression.

organize books for reading fluency warm-ups

Mini Books are also a great warm-up for the small group table or for intervention time. You can organize the mini books in whatever way works for you and the scope-and-sequence you use at your school. Separating the books by syllable type, in order of skills taught each month, or by reading group can help keep your small group practice organized and efficient.

Why do I recommend using the Phonics Mini Books for small-group practice? By having students read the word list, then sentence list, then short passage, the books are naturally scaffolded. The word list starts with blocked practice- students are practicing the specific target skill on the entire page. The sentences and short story include interleaved practice and review of irregular and high-frequency words.

The FREE labels that go with the book baggies include EDITABLE labels, too! Yes! This means you can type whatever you’d like onto the labels. This allows you to organize your books in whatever way works best for you. Hooray! Just scroll down a bit further to grab your FREE editable Read-n-Go Book Baggie labels!

get free and editable read-n-go book bag labels!

Interested in using the Read-n-Go Book Bags to store and use your Phonics Decodable Mini books?! I’ve got FREE labels that will help you get organized as you build practice into your routine for reading fluency. You can sign up for my email below, and as a thank you, I’ll send you the editable labels straight to your inbox.

The Phonics Mini Books are available in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop, or right here on my website shop! Just click the image below to learn more. You’ll love having more than 50 books at your fingertips!

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