Reach All Readers A powerful and practical routine for teaching with decodable text – with Brianna Guild
Nov 3, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Brianna Guild, a private-practice speech-language pathologist and creator of SLP Literacy Corner, shares her passion for literacy. She defines decodable texts and emphasizes their role in teaching letter-sound relationships. Brianna outlines an effective lesson routine, including comprehension questions and modeled retells, that naturally weaves in vocabulary and fluency. She also discusses how to adapt lessons for advanced readers and describes a creative sorting activity to enhance orthographic mapping, making reading fun and structured!
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Brianna's Background And Projects
- Brianna Guild is a private-practice SLP in Ontario who runs SLP Literacy Corner and consults on accessible educational games.
- She helped design an evidence-aligned alphabet book and a learn-to story for an educational game due in 2025.
What Decodable Texts Really Do
- Decodable texts include only letter-sound relationships students have already learned to support decoding and orthographic mapping.
- They build accurate word memory by connecting phonemes, graphemes, and meaning rather than encouraging guessing from pictures or context.
Guessing Masks Weak Decoding
- Patterned leveled books can encourage guessing using pictures or context, which bypasses sound-spelling mapping.
- That guessing habit may look fluent early but undermines accurate decoding and later reading development.
