Lexile.com is a great resource for finding books and other reading materials that match the individual reading level of your students. It also provides information about reading assessments and other resources to help you and your students improve reading skills. Lexile.com is not new, and Reading Specialty has a previous blog post about readability which includes information on lexile.com.
New features have recently been added, ones that you may be interested in for your class! One of the features I recently learned about allows the teacher to search for decodable books based on vowel sounds. Click here to be redirected to this feature. https://hub.lexile.com/find-a-decodable-book Using the drop down you can search for short a,e, i o, u, o, u or all short vowels. You can also search for long a,e,i,o,u or log vowel sounds. A quick search for the short i sound brought these results.
(screenshot from Lexile.com–visit their website for complete results and to see this feature in action)
Clicking on the title will bring you additional information such as the topic, percent of words with the selected vowel sound, and total number of words.
A second feature provides decodable passages (with comprehension questions) based on the selected phonetic skills. A drop down allows you to select short a, short and e, short a and short i, short a and short o, short a and short u, all short vowels, and all short vowels with blends/diagraphs. Activating the green search bar will provide a decodable passage, complete with comprehension questions.
There are so many tools for educators on the lexile.com website, including tools for educators, parents, students and researchers. If you have not spent time on this website, it is definitely worth your time.
Looking for resources for your K-2 students? Check these out from Reading Specialty.
Students learn to recognize patterns in their reading through the use of word families. This resource gives students multiple opportunities to work with the AT, AY, and IG families. A passage focusing on CVC pattern with the designated family is the basis for each unit. Students will practice decoding using these short vowel words and basic sight words. These are great for building confidence and fluency.
About CVC Digital Task Cards
These interactive digital Boom cards are self-correcting and allow young readers a chance to practice initial sounds with CVC words. The following words are used in this group of 30 cards:
an family: can, fan, pan, man, van, ran, plan, tan
op family: mop, shop, drop, hopples, stop, pop, top, chop
ip family: snip, zip, rip, flip, lip, dip, slip, ship
en family: ten, hen, men, pen, wren, den
For each card a mascot will hold a picture. Students identify the initial consonant or blend from four multiple choice options.
Click here to view this resource.
About Robot CVC Digital Task Cards
These interactive digital Boom™ cards are self-correcting and allow young readers a chance to practice initial sounds with CVC words. The following words are used in this group of 24 cards:
at family: bat (animal and baseball), cat, fat, hat, rat, pat, mat
ay family, clay, play, hay, pray, spray, gray, day, stay,
ig family, pig, dig, wig, big, twig, zig, rig
For each card a robot will hold a picture. Students identify the initial consonant or blend from four multiple choice options.