Decodable Readers and Phonics Instructional Support
Our brief, diverse, and engaging decodable texts provide students with opportunities to apply phonics knowledge and encounter a diverse group of characters and entertaining storylines. Each decodable text collection comes with the instructional support that teachers value. Our easy to use lesson plans support both teaching phonics and fostering vocabulary and comprehension, and our phonics practice tools for students make using these plans easy for teachers.
Our Classroom Sets have 10 copies of 30 titles, setting teachers up for successful small groups or whole class phonics practice.
Phonics Sequences
What people are saying
Kari Yates and Jan Burkins,
Authors of Shifting the Balance
"Kids will connect to the storylines in these fun little books featuring diverse and relatable characters. Adults will love the 'Cheat Sheets' with information about decodability, HFWs, and conversation ideas all in one place."
Classroom Teacher
Buffalo, New York
"This has been the resource I've been looking for! It's so hard to find diverse decodable books that have lots of different kids represented- my kids are learning to read and getting to see themselves in the books they read."
Jennifer Serravallo,
Author of
The Reading Strategies Book
"I really love these as an option for early readers...a collection of texts that allow for diverse representation which is sorely needed in books for beginning readers. The scope and sequence-aligned texts will be so supportive. I love also that the books make sense, and sound like natural language while also supporting readers to apply their phonics knowledge to connected text reading."
Meet the Team Behind Daffodil Hill Press
Hello! We’re Marie, Kimberly, Katrina, and Lizzie----the team behind Daffodil Hill Press. Each of us has always been invested in supporting students’ literacy growth and learning continuously as educators. Our careers began as teachers in NYC public schools. We began to collaborate when we worked together as literacy consultants and curriculum writers at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, where we worked alongside teachers and students to support literacy growth. Along the way, we realized that to ensure that all students learned how to read well, we needed to make massive shifts in assessment, instruction, and materials.
We know that decodable texts can be one tool to support early readers, and we also believe in the importance of diverse, engaging materials—so we set out to create decodable books that represent ourselves as well as our families, friends, and communities. Because our books are about real-life kids and real-life families you will see a diversity of ethnicity, gender, and family structures. We are also proud to offer lesson plans, assessments, e-books and blending lines in easy-to-use formats for teachers.
Katrina, Lizzie, and Marie live in Brooklyn, NY, and Kimberly lives in Maplewood, NJ (where her basement stored the very first shipments of our decodables). In addition to creating materials for teachers, we work with schools and districts to support systems-based change, curricular needs, and teacher and student growth. Check out our Substack to learn more about our thinking around decodable texts, assessments and more!
More About Our Decodable Books
Decodable texts are an essential tool in the literacy toolkit, providing a crucial bridge between phonics instruction and reading comprehension. By using decodable texts, students can apply the phonics skills they've learned to real reading material, gaining fluency and confidence as they read. We at Daffodil Hill Press believe that we shouldn't have sacrifice rich, diverse characters and stories in order to give targeted phonics practice. Inspired by the work by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's work we carefully designed our characters to be representative of a wide range of identities and experiences, so that students can see themselves and others reflected in books.
These short, engaging books (each book is only four pages long) provide practice with early phonics skills. High frequency words are introduced strategically across the sets. Each set comes with a password to the digital resources section of our website, which includes cheat sheets, blending lines, a planning template to use across books, and digital copies of all the books in the kit. We've carefully curated our collection of texts to provide a wide range of reading experiences, from beginning phonics with CVC words to more complex single-syllable words with the CVCe pattern. Our texts are designed to provide a scaffolded approach to literacy development, gradually building students' skills and knowledge as they progress through the texts. The digital copies of the books will be available until June 2023. See the Free eBooks page for samples of the cheat sheets and digital copies of the books.
Classroom Set:
We know how important it is to have enough decodable books for kids to read, so each classroom set collection contain 300 books (10 copies each of our 30 titles). This allows teachers to use them flexibly—for example, a teacher might use all 10 for small group reading lessons, or instead keep 6 copies for small groups and place 4 copies in a classroom library. And we know how precious teachers' planning time is, so each book comes with a short accompanying digital lesson plan to support decoding as well as vocabulary and comprehension.
One of Each Set:
The one of each sets contain one copy of each of our 30 titles, as well as a digital lesson plan for each book that has fun and engaging activities to support your students' phonics learning.
Visit the Free eBooks page to access digital copies of select books.