“Advancing Evidence in Practice”
Prompted by a list of Decodable book sources I found on their Facebook page (and available for download below), I recently had the great pleasure of exchanging emails about the TAP Library with Prof. Maria Murray and Dr. Heidi Beverine-Curry of The Reading League, an organization based in New York state whose mission is “to build educator knowledge of how to teach reading using evidence-based, highly effective methods of reading instruction and assessment.” The League has over 3000 members: teachers, professors and researchers, administrators, parents, people with dyslexia and other reading difficulties, school psychologists, speech and language pathologists, counselors, health care providers, attorneys, and more. Through regular meetings, social networking and professional development activities, their goal is to see that “all educators who teach students to read…use evidence-based practices that result in successful reading outcomes for all learners.” Who can argue with that?
Resources for Evidence-Based Reading Instruction
They provide a wealth of materials related to evidence-based reading instruction materials on their website (with even more available in a members-only area) and have a YouTube channel with video from their events and Prof. Murray’s “Knowledge Series for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.”
For a first taste of their channel, I highly recommend watching this short video in which teachers discuss with humility, honesty and excitement their “awakening” to systematic reading instruction. The video, meant to explain why The Reading League is needed, is extremely well produced and quite moving.
Decodable Text Sources
As I mentioned, I had reached out to The Reading League to suggest the addition of our TAP Library app to their list of decodable text sources. The great thing about their document is that a link is provided for every source, which makes finding these decodables so much easier. After examining the app and our decodable texts, their message to me was “We are quite impressed with your decodable texts and are happy to add them to our list!” They even graciously agreed to let me make their updated-to-include-TAP list available in this blog post, so here it is:
Click here to download The Reading League’s Decodable Text Sources PDF Document
I’d like to thank The Reading League for all their great work in making educators and others aware of evidence-based reading instruction, the important role of decodable books in such instruction and the availability of decodables for learners of all ages.