Lexile Decodability Analysis

There are several features on the Book Details Page that warrant further explanation. Below you can find more information:

Categories Definition & Examples
High Frequency Irregular Words & Contractions High Frequency Irregular Words include:
  • Dolch and Fry words (all grades) that did not fit into one of the cells in the table. For example, “in” is listed on the Dolch and Fry Sight word lists, but it fits in the table cell (in the short “I” row and VC column). Therefore, it was not listed up top under the header of “High-Frequency Irregular Words & Contractions.” This intends to place all decodable High-Frequency Irregular words (words that follow common phonic rules) in the table.
  • High-Frequency Irregular Words also include monosyllabic words that did not fit into a cell in the table. You can see that only 10 vowel sounds are represented (5 short and 5 long). However, English words contain other vowel categories that we did not include in our ten rows of vowel sounds. For example, we did not include the /oo/ sound in words like “book” or the /ou/ sound in words like “soup.” Therefore, words like “book” and “soup” will be found under the High-Frequency Irregular Words category.
  • High-Frequency Irregular Words also include words that contain rare graphemes (letters) that represent sounds. For example, the grapheme ‘i.e.’ represents the “long e” sound in the word “field.” However, even though the field is a monosyllabic word, and the table has a row for “Long e” sounds, as well as a column for vowel team spelling patterns, the word “field” will be categorized under “High-Frequency Irregular Words” because the particular sound-spelling mapping of, i.e., long e was not included due to its relative rarity in beginning reader texts. Determinations of rarity were made based on expert opinion and Research.

    Contractions are any words that contain apostrophes.
VC/CVC(s) This column is for words with short vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of:
  • Vowel-consonant words (“it”).
  • Consonant-vowel-consonant words (“sit”).
  • Plural or conjugated consonant-vowel-consonant words (“hens” or “sits”).
(CC)V(CC)(s) This column is for words with short vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of:
  • Words with only an initial blend (“trip”) or digraph (“ship”).
  • Words with only an ending blend (“and”) or digraph (“ash”).
  • Plural or conjugated words with either an initial blend (“slips”) or ending blend (“rests”).
  • Plural or conjugated words with either an initial digraph (“ciips”) or ending digraph (“picks”).
(CCC)V(CCC)(s) This column is for words with short vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of:
  • Words with both a beginning and ending 2-letter blend or digraph (“chunks,” “skunks”).
  • Words with a 3-letter beginning blend or digraph (“script”).
  • Words with a 3-letter ending blend or digraph (“sketch”).
  • Words with a 3-letter initial and ending blend or digraph (“stretch”).
R Controlled This column is for words with short vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of:
  • Words with vowels whose sounds are altered by the letter “r” directly after the vowel (“car”).
  • These include words with blends or digraphs (“warmth”).
V/CV This column is for words with long vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of:
  • Single-letter words such as “I” or “A.”
  • Two-letter words such as “go” or “me.”
(CC)VCe(s) This column is for words with long vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of:
  • Consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e (“make”).
  • Plural or conjugated consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e (“makes”)
  • Blend-vowel-consonant-silent e (“snake”).
  • Digraph-vowel-consonant-silent e (“white”).
Vowel Teams This column is for words with long vowel sounds and a spelling pattern of two vowels next to each other, including:
  • Two vowels after a single consonant (“see”).
  • Two vowels after a consonant blend (“tree”).
  • Two vowels in the middle of consonant blends, digraphs, or single consonants (“treat,” “sheet,” “street”).
  • Any of the above categories but plural or conjugated (“sees,” “trees,” “treats,” “sheets,” “streets”).
  • This category, unlike other categories, includes past tense words that are monosyllabic such as “cleaned.”