First Grade · Reading · week 8

Decodable Stories with Blends

Read a short decodable story built from digraphs and blends already learned, and retell what happened.

You know enough sounds now to read a whole little story! A decodable story only uses words you can already sound out -- no guessing needed.

Read it slow the first time, sounding out any tricky word. Then read it again a little faster. The second read is always smoother.

📋 For the teacher
Teach it (10–15 min):
  • Read the title together first and predict what the story might be about.
  • Let your child sound out a hard word rather than telling them the word right away -- give them five seconds before helping.
  • Reread the whole story a second time for smoothness once every word has been sounded out once.
  • Ask what happened at the end, in order, so decoding connects to understanding.
Talk about it:
  • What happened first in the story? What happened next?
  • Which word took you the longest to sound out?
  • Did the story make more sense on the second read?

Mastery looks like: They read a short decodable story with mostly accurate decoding and can retell what happened.

Common stumbles: Guessing at a word from its shape instead of sounding it out, and losing track of the story while decoding.

See it visually

Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.

Blending & SegmentingSlide sounds together to read a word — /s/ /u/ /n/ → “sun”.try →Story SequencePut events in order: first, next, then, last.try →
Homework for this lessonType it, write it with a stylus, or print it for pencil & paper.open →
Records attendance + 15 min of Reading for this learner.
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