At each school within our district we continue to have students who are reading significantly below grade level and not responding to interventions. The Sonday System is an evidence-based and research-based, systematic and explicit reading and spelling program designed for students who have difficulty in the areas of decoding and spelling. This program is unique because training can be done quickly, and implementation can be done easily. The program is designed to be taught not only by teachers, but also paraprofessionals and other school staff. In addition to the benefits that systematic reading instruction can provide, students can also benefit from the ability to generalize these newly learned skills.
Unfortunately, the Sonday System does not supply meaningful texts for students to practice their newly learned reading skills; however, the program developers have suggested and recommended high quality decodable text in which students can practice their reading skills. These specific texts are of interest to our special education team because they offer the students opportunities to practice learned skills with high interest, controlled text with lower readability. It can be difficult to find decodable texts for our older students. Phonic Books offer materials for a wide range of ages that have been popular with students in other special education classes across the district.