Find a Decodable Book

Find a Decodable Book will be launching on January 31!

Search for decodable books by vowel sounds(s). View a book's percentage of vowel sounds and words grouped by spelling patterns.

Find a Decodable Book Quick Start Guide

Lexile Decodability Analysis

⏤⏤⏤

On the search page, you say, “Search by Sounds, but how do I know which spelling patterns will show up in the search results? In other words, if I search by “short a” will I only get books with “short a” in CVC words or could there be more complicated words?

You will have to visit the book details page (for a given book) to see the types of words in that book categorized by spelling patterns.

If you search for short vowel sounds, the short vowel sound that was selected can be in one of four spelling patterns, all within monosyllabic words:
  • Simple CVC words
  • Words with a beginning blend or digraph or ending blend or digraph
  • “Complex” blends/digraphs that can occur at the beginning of a word, end of a word, or both:
  • R-controlled vowel words
If you search for long vowel sounds, the vowel sound that was selected can be in one of three spelling patterns, all within monosyllabic words:
  • Open syllable words with the CV or CCV spelling pattern
  • Silent e or “magic e” words with the CVCe or CCVCe spelling pattern
  • Any word that has two consecutive vowels

To learn more about word categorizations, see Lexile Decodability Analysis.

If I search by “all short vowel sounds,” does that mean every short vowel will be present in the search results, or that some might have only 4 of the 5 or 3 of the 5 short vowels?

It means that the book will contain all 5 of the short vowels. There may not be equal percentages across all short vowels, but all short vowels will be represented at least once. You can check out the book details page to see examples of the individual words in the book.

How did you classify words into spelling pattern categories?

Please see Lexile Decodability Analysis for the full decision criteria across spelling categories and example words in each category.

How did you deal with proper nouns?

Proper nouns were treated the same way as any other word in the corpus (dictionary) of words we scored. If the proper noun were a decodable CVC “short i” word like “Jim,” it would be categorized in the table in the “short i” row and the CVC column. However, many potential proper nouns (names of people) may not exist in our dictionary. We are collecting a list of all words (proper nouns and others types of words) that are not in our current dictionary and will score them and add them to the dictionary. If we are uncertain how they are pronounced, we will reach out to the author for guidance.

I know a particular word was in a book, but I do not see it in any template categories; why is that?

That is probably because the word was outside our dictionary. We are collecting all the words that are not in the dictionary and will periodically update the dictionary.

Do you intend to add additional features or update this tool?

Yes. This is version 1, and we intend to collect feedback and adjust accordingly. Please contact us with any feedback or comments you may have.