When Neelum Arya’s daughter was four years old, she had trouble matching letters to sounds. She has dyslexia, and Arya started looking for resources.
She learned about decodable books. They focus on specific letter and sound combinations. Kids build on those skills as they move through a series of books.
“I think there is a general perception that if you simply read to your children often enough that your children will learn how to read, almost automatically,” Arya said. “But just like we can listen to a lot of Mozart and not become a piano player, it's the same thing here.”
Arya worked with literacy advocates to bring a new collection of decodable books to the San Diego Central Library.
Decodables help kids learn how to sound out new words, rather than guessing. That builds their confidence, said Emily Derry, the supervising librarian for youth and family services at the San Diego Public Library.
“They can look at the words and figure it out, and then they get excited and confident,” she said.
Parents teaching their kids how to read might look for books labeled “beginner.” The sentences might be simple, but kids might run into roadblocks when trying to read letter combinations they haven’t seen before.
Now, parents will have access to books specifically designed to help kids learn phonics.
“This is something that we've been wanting to do for a while, because we know that it's hard to find books in the collection that meet the children where they're at,” Derry said.
When Arya met other parents whose kids needed extra support with reading, she lent them her decodable books. Having them at the library will make them more accessible to families, she said.
“I'm absolutely thrilled this is available,” Arya said. “I hope that we can see every single library in San Diego County create some similar resource.”
