Geniebooks make learning to read easier!
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Geniebooks
Help your child learn to read with stories
from our new decodable book series!
How Geniebooks help children learn to read
Lad and His Pals and Fun and Games with Lad and Slim are now available as print books, as Kindle eBooks, and as Apple Books for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Here is the Amazon author page.
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Decodable books arrange reading success for beginners by making sure the vowels taught in phonics lessons work in reading stories. The content words are carefully selected to require only the vowels taught to date to unlock the words. Of course, children still need a few dozen common, irregular function words (e.g., the, a, of, to, etc.). In a landmark study, Juel and Roper/Schneider found that first graders who read decodable stories in their reading series learned to read words better than children who read stories not engineered to be decodable, even though both groups had the same phonics lessons.
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Lad and his Pals features 14 engaging decodable stories for practicing the five short vowels and the consonant digraphs sh, ch, and th. With decodable stories, phonics works to unlock the words, opening a window on the adventures of animals and children who become familiar storybook friends.
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Fun and Games with Lad and Slim, our long vowel series of decodable stories for beginning readers, has 15 engaging decodable stories for advanced beginners: two stories for each long vowel, as well as stories for more advanced vowel digraphs (er, ir, and ur; ar and or; ou and ow; au and aw; and oi and oy). With the wider pool of words, we were able to create some wonderful stories in Fun and Games with Lad and Slim. If you are like me, you will laugh out loud with some stories, and with others, you may get a lump in your throat.
In the Geniebooks, we’ve maintained a common cast of characters across the stories. Like the Dick and Jane stories read by earlier generations, our stories follow two families of children and animals through a series of adventures, inviting children to read new stories with familiar characters and situations. However, unlike Dick and Jane, our children are culturally diverse, and some of the most important characters are animals—a dog, two cats, some angry geese, a mischievous snake, and a pet pig!
Everybody Loves Lad and Slim!
Dear Reading Experts,
Thank you for getting me this book. But I have a special request: Please DON’T read this book to me. This book is specially written for me to read to you!
Liam
Most past attempts at creating decodable stories didn't work. Teachers and parents, steeped in the rich atmosphere of beautifully illustrated children’s literature, groaned over joyless prose like “Dan had a tan fan.” We have incorporated the best features of past decodable stories: strong story structure, inviting illustrations, and a growing set of correspondences allowing an ever richer pool of words.
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Teachers and parents are looking for books beginners can read successfully. They know children can’t enjoy the wonderful stories in children’s literature until they learn to read words easily. Lad and His Pals and its companion volume, Fun and Games with Lad and Slim, provide teachers and parents with fun and engaging stories children can read without guesswork as a bridge to children’s literature.
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Teachers in primary classrooms will find these books useful for phonics instruction with beginners and with struggling readers. Home-schooling parents will find in these books a basic resource for helping their children develop decoding ability with the most useful letter-sound correspondences for learning to read words in English.
For links and lessons on learning to read, visit my Reading Genie website.
Questions? Email me at murraba@auburn.edu
Now available both as paperbacks and as Kindle eBooks on Amazon! Click for my author page.