4 Add a Decodable Reader to a Collection

Introduction

A reader is a book that is used for reading exercises. Decodable Readers include only:

words with phonetic patterns that have been taught
high-frequency words that have been taught (These are referred to as sight-words.)

In the Bloom, you can make groups of letters and sight words. We call each of these groups a stage. You can save files of word lists or paragraphs of words. Bloom can read these files. When the letters you have introduced in a stage match words in those files, then Bloom will identify those words as matching words, and suggest them to you as words you can use.

Usually, these readers start with CVC words (C stands for Consonant; V stands for Vowel). Then, they use words with more complex spelling patterns. The pictures in these books support the story, but do not help with word recognition.

Decodable Readers and Leveled Readers are different. However, in some cases you may want to use both control when you make some readers. That is beyond the scope of this module.

The Help documentation that is installed with Bloom will help you learn more.

Prerequisites

You have completed module 1 and 2. Therefore, you are familiar with the steps to add a book to a collection.
You need to know the letters in the alphabet that use will use as the main language for the reader.
You need to have a file with some words you expect to use in the reader. The file needs to be a UTF-8 Unicode text file. That is, the file name must end with .txt.

Microsoft® Notepad is useful for making these files. The file can be simply a list of words, or it can be paragraphs from other books, or even larger texts. The more words Bloom knows, the more word Bloom can suggest to you as you make readers. In addition, larger paragraphs of text can help you see which words are used most often. Then in Bloom, you can sort the suggested words by frequency.

Add a Decodable Reader to a Collection

When Bloom is first opened, you see only the Collections tab. Look in the lower left pane in the Bloom window. There you see Sources for New Books. Below it, you see Templates, Sample Shells and Books From BloomLibrary.org.

To make a leveled reader, we need to use the Decodable Reader template.

1) Click the Decodable Reader template. It looks like this: .

The template appears in the right pane.

2) Click the Make a book using the source button.

Bloom makes a book from the template. It opens to the Front Cover page.

You can insert a picture and type words on the Front Cover page. This page and the other pages are the same as for a Basic Book.

However, notice that there is a new pane on the right side. It is the Decodable Reader Tool.

It looks like this: .

Bloom does not come with preset stages. This is because Bloom needs to know the letter in your alphabet.

3) In the Decodable Reader Tool, click the Set up Stages link ( ).

The Set up Decodable Reader Tool dialog box appears.

4) Click the Letters tab.

Notice the Letters and Letter Combinations box. It has letters. You need to replace them with the letters of the alphabet that you will use as you write this book.

Optionally, click the Help button ( ). The Help topic that opens can help you learn more about this tab. There are links in the topic that open other related topics.

5) Click the Letters and Letter Combinations box. Then do the following steps:

Replace the letters with the letters of the alphabet that you will use as you write this book.
Type all the letter combinations that are used with you set of letters.
Type any word-forming characters, such as an apostrophe or glottal stop.

This letters, letter combinations and word-forming characters will help Bloom find matching words and suggest them. First, we need to tell Bloom about words.

6) Click the Words tab.

There are two ways to tell Bloom about the words.

The Type Words Here box allows you to type a set of words that you will probably use in your readers.

The Place Text Files in Your Sample Texts Folder box is different. You cannot type in this box. Instead, this box shows the file names of files in a folder named Sample Texts. Each collection has a Sample Texts folder. You can save files there that are word lists or longer texts in paragraphs.

Important: These files need to be UTF-8 Unicode files. They must be *.txt files. Their filenames must end with .txt. Otherwise, Bloom cannot read them.

Optionally, click the Help button (

). The Help topic that opens can help you learn more about this tab. There are links in the topic that open other related topics.

7) In the Place Text Files in Your Sample Texts Folder label, click Sample Text Folder.

It is a link. It opens the folder for the collection.

8) Save one or more text files in the Sample Texts folder. You can drag files from other folders, or use Save As in your text editor to save the files here.

Now, we need to set up stages.

9) Click the Decodable Stages tab.

It looks like this:

Notice that there are two panes. The left pane will list the stages. The right page is where you choose the letters you want to introduce in each stage. The screenshot here shows English letters. If you typed different letter in the Letters tab, you will see those letter instead. In addition, sight words are those high-frequency words that you want the people to memorize.

You can introduce them in stages, too.

Stage 1 is the only stage at this point. You can introduce letter and type

10) In the right pane, click the letter you want to introduce in Stage 1.

Notice that as you click the letters, they appear in the left pane and the background color of those letters changes. When Bloom finds words in your files that use the letter, you see those words in the matching words box. The red font color means that these words are new in this stage.

Click the New Sight Words box, and type any words you want to introduce in this stage.

Notice that the sight words also appear in the matching words box. They appear with a bold blue font.

11) In the left pane, click Add Stage.

Click the letters you want to introduce in Stage 2.

Notice that you cannot add letters that are in Stage 1.

Notice that as new words appear in the matching words box, the new letters appear with a red font. Therefore, some words may have mostly letter in black font and one or more with red. This helps you know which words use these new letters.

12) Repeat these steps to add one or more additional stage.

Optionally, click the Help button ( ). The Help topic that opens can help you learn more about this tab. There are links in the topic that open other related topics.

13) Click OK.

The Decodable Reader Tool will now show letter and words.

Here is an example, set to Stage 2 of 5. Of course, you will see different letters and words.

Use the arrows ( ) to choose the stage for your book.

Now let’s type some words in a page to see what happens.

14) In the Template Pages pane, click Basic Text & Picture.

15) Click the text box, and type words.

Notice that if you type word that are in the list of Words in this stage, or words that were introduced in previous stages, those words appear normally in the text box. However, if a word you typed uses one or more letter that has not been introduced yet, it is flagged with a blue background. Here is an example:

If you have a word in our book that has a blue background, hold your mouse pointer over that word to see the explanation.

16) At this point, you can experiment with other stages, and page templates.

Other modules will help you learn about publishing your reader.