Frequently Asked Questions

Important fact about dyslexia I wish I had known 1: Young children often show red flags that they have dyslexia, but their parents or caregivers/teachers often miss them. If anyone in your family has/had trouble reading, your child is at increased risk for dyslexia. Speech and language delays or difficulty rhyming words are red flags for dyslexia. If your child has difficulty with speech sounds compared to other children their age, it could be a sign of dyslexia.

My daughter’s speech was clearly behind other kids her age and she did not understand how to rhyme words. Because I am that nerdy mom that did the Ages and Stages Questionnaire on my babies, I did get her into speech therapy before her first birthday. However, we did not know her inability to rhyme words was a red flag. We simply gave up on trying to teach her how to rhyme words. When she was two and a half, I contacted someone that was supposed to be knowledgeable about dyslexia. She told me not to worry about it until my daughter was 8. This was the absolute
worst advice we could have been given.

An even more important fact about dyslexia I wish I had known 2: If you think your child may have dyslexia, DO NOT DELAY GETTING HELP. Many parents have been told to “Watch and Wait.” That is the absolute worst advice. It takes so long for a child with dyslexia to learn to read that they may never catch up if you wait. Additionally, the earlier you start interventions, the less help they will need as they get older.

Many struggling readers might not have received effective reading instruction. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers were taught to use “Three-cueing” strategies. They tell kids things like “Look at the picture to figure out what the word is.” That is teaching kids to guess and they rarely become strong readers.

Other struggling readers have brain wiring that makes it hard for them to understand that every letter has a specific sound (or sounds) and that if you put those letters together, they make words. Many also have trouble with rote memorization. Remembering which sound a letter makes is tough and it requires a lot of repetition and a teacher with lots of patience and time. Dyslexia runs in families. It is not uncommon for a parent to think, “My child has dyslexia. It was hard for me to learn to read. Maybe I have dyslexia too.”

The good news about teaching reading is that both groups of learners can learn with the same methods and phonics sequence. They can use the same decodable books. The big difference will be that individuals with dyslexia will take a lot longer to learn the material and may need more specific instruction.

Research shows that explicit systematic phonics is the most effective way to teach reading to students with dyslexia. You teach children the sounds a few letters make, then you teach them how to sound out (decode) the words. Once they learn a few letters and their sounds, you teach a few more. You do not advance until they have mastered each skill.

Here are two books you can read or print for FREE:
Teaching a Struggling Reader: One Mom’s Experience with Dyslexia also has a FREE audiobook: https://dogonalogbooks.com/struggling-reader/

Teach Reading with Decodable Books https://dogonalogbooks.com/how-to-use/

Decodable books include words with specific phonics rules and a small, specific set of High Frequency Words (HFW) and nothing else. The included phonics AND the included HFW should be listed in the book.

A lot of publishers and authors have realized that they can sell books if they put the word “Decodable” on it. Sadly, many of these books use a lot of words that do not follow the stated rules. They say “They’re story words to make the book interesting.” We say, “Humphf!” We have decodable books over 8,000 words long that kids enjoy reading and we do not use more than a small handful of story words. (Like the word “canes.” Our characters who are visually impaired use canes and it was a word the stories needed before magic “e” was introduced.) We always list the story words in our HFW list. Maybe those other publishers need different authors. Too many words that kids cannot decode make the books frustrating. Those books should be saved for when the kids’ reading skills match the book content.

Takeaway: If a decodable book does not list the phonics rules and the HFW included, it is probably not decodable.

You can read a more poetic answer to Why we use decodable books here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/why-decodable-books/

When most people think of beginning reader books, they often think of leveled books. There is no standard for leveled books other than maybe each publisher determines the number of words on a page. So, a Level 1 book with a specific publisher would have less words than a Level 2 book by the same publisher. You will see complicated, multisyllabic words in leveled books. Because there are no phonics rules followed in these books, students cannot be taught in advance what they will be reading. They will often be encouraged to guess what a word is based on its first letter or an accompanying picture.

Decodable books are based on the scientific research that shows that explicit, systematic phonics is the most effective method for teaching reading to children who struggle. Decodable books state the phonics rules and High Frequency Words used in the book. They do not stray from those lists. (If they do stray, they are not decodable books.) Before a student reads a decodable book, they should have been taught the phonics rules and the HFW they will be encountering and they should have had a chance to practice reading words and sentences with those rules.

So, save the leveled books for either reading to your kids or for your kids to read once they actually know how to read.

There are 44 different sounds in the English language. Phonics is a reading method that where we say those sounds are made by specific letters or combinations of letters. Systematic phonics provides gradual introduction to these sound/letter combinations.

By gradually introducing a limited number of sound/letter combinations, students learn to sound-out (decode) and spell the words that are made with those letters. Once they master a few of sound/letter combinations and get good at reading them, they are taught a few more combinations. This allows students to gradually build their reading and spelling skills. This type of instruction continues until the student has mastered the majority of the sound/letter combinations and can read and spell many words. It is like climbing a ladder.

It would be hard to jump from the ground to the roof of a building in a single leap. However, most people would be able to get to the rooftop by climbing a ladder with a bunch of small steps.

You tell the student the rules explicitly. “This is the letter ‘a.’ It makes the sound /a/ like at the beginning of the word ‘apple.’ Can you make the /a/ sound? Can you trace the letter ‘a’ on this card? Let me show you how you write the letter ‘a.’ Let us read these three-letter words with a in the middle.”

No one phonics sequence has been found to necessarily be better than another. What is important is that kids are taught a limited number of phonics rules before adding a few more. Also, that the decodable materials they read only include the phonics rules they have been taught.

As students progress with their reading, they will naturally gravitate to typical books (often called “authentic books,” though we think decodable books are authentic so we avoid that term.) Every child gravitates out of decodables at a different time, although most start reading typical books between mid-first grade and mid-third grade. Some individuals with dyslexia may not move beyond decodables until their teen years. That is one reason audiobooks are good for providing age-based content.

But back to the phonics sequence…While there is no definitive sequence for introducing phonics rules, there are some general guidelines.

1. Start with simple concepts and move to concepts with increasing complexity. For example, adding an s to a word to make it plural or changing the verb is far easier than r- controlled syllables.
2. Start with skills that will be used more than others. For example, you will read the short letter ‘a’ much more than you will encounter the spelling pattern ‘eigh.’
3. Choose the rules that will give you the most bang for your buck. “Magic e” is a useful rule which expands the number of words a student can read, but it is also hard for some kids with dyslexia. A private teacher/tutor would have to decide if the number of words it offers justifies how hard it might be for that student to learn.

We get good compliments about our Phonics Progression (Scope and Sequence.) You can see it here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/sequence/

Decodable books should be used AFTER you teach the phonics rules and High Frequency Words that are included in the book. After you have explained the phonics rules to your student, have them practice reading and writing words and sentences that follow those rules.

When your student has gotten reasonably good with the skill, the decodable book lets them practice and work towards mastering the skills.

You can also read/print for free “Teach Reading With Decodable Books: https://dogonalogbooks.com/how-to-use/

Keywords are a tool to remember the sound a letter or group of letters make. When a student sees a letter and they cannot remember its sound, they can think of the keyword and the picture of the keyword. This can be especially helpful for kids who can see the picture in their head, but are challenged by the sound of the keyword.

Keyword posters or binders with keyword tables can be kept close during reading instruction/practice for quick access.

You can read more about keywords here AND there are FREE keyword tables you can print and use. https://dogonalogbooks.com/keywords/

It is almost impossible to write a decodable sentence, much less a thousand-word decodable book without using a few words that do not follow the included phonics. These are words that are commonly used, but have an irregular element that either cannot be decoded or cannot be decoded with the phonics used in that particular decodable book.

For example, the words “the, said, could, want” all have an irregular element.

The words “see, I, her, for” are High Frequency Words (HFW.). They can be decoded, but not until the phonics rules have been taught. In the DOG ON A LOG progression, the rules for “see, I, her, for” are introduced in Steps 9, 10, and 11. Those words are all commonly used in beginning books. Therefore, they must be taught before a student encounters them in their reading.

There are two common methods for teaching irregular words: Memorization or Heart words.

During the earliest reading, when all the letters have NOT been taught, memorization is probably necessary. For most kids, once the letters have been learned, the heart word method is probably most effective.

Heart Word Method: Teach the kids to consider the parts of the word they can sound out and the parts of the word they must know by HEART. For the word ‘said’ they know the sounds of s and d and must remember the sound ai makes for that specific word. They can draw a heart around the irregular element.

Memorization: For my daughter, and many individuals with dyslexia, remembering all the heart word parts was too confusing and too hard. Although it was a lot of work to help her memorize the words, it would have been even harder for her to understand the Heart Word method.

For students who need to memorize words, this is the method my daughter’s first teacher used and it was quite successful:

1. The word is written with marker in 2-inch tall letters on strips of cut up paper grocery bags.
2. With two fingers, she underlines the word while saying the word.
3. With two fingers she traces each letter while saying the letter’s name.
4. She underlines the word again while saying it.
5. She pauses then starts the whole process over.
6. She repeats this until she feels she can write it.
7. She writes it on paper or a dry erase board then verifies its spelling.
8. She writes it again and verifies her spelling.
9. She writes each word a minimum of 5 times.
10. Then the word is added to our daily flashcard stack.

Sometimes this is all that is needed. Other words require us to do this multiple times. I have been told some kids will have to trace a complicated word at least 100 times to learn it. As I said, this learning style requires lots of repetition.

You can see the DOG ON A LOG High Frequency Word Progression here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/hfw

DOG ON A LOG Books are a systematic series of decodable books. That means they adhere to a specific sequence of phonics rules and High Frequency Words. Every word included in each book’s story will be readable as long as the student has been explicitly instructed in both the phonics rules and the HFW used. This is different from leveled books that don’t follow phonics rules and mainly just limit the number of words on a page based on its level.

DOG ON A LOG decodable books do not teach reading. Instruction must be provided before the books can be read. (A few precocious children will be able to read them without instruction, but that is a small number of kids.)

While there are many quality decodable books available (and a lot of books that are just labeled decodable to make a quick sale,) DOG ON A LOG books offer a lot more reading practice than most decodable books. Our chapter books are among the longest chapter books you will find and there are multiple chapter books for each Step of phonics. This gives students more decodable reading practice than they will get pretty much anywhere else. Plus, our books adhere to a strict phonics progression. We move students forward to new phonics rules. Very few phonics series include as many phonics rules as ours does.

DOG ON A LOG Chapter Books are a rare find. While most decodable books have 50 to 100 words, and some companies boast their decodables have 300 words per book, most DOG ON A LOG books have close to, or well over, 1,000 words. Our first chapter book is the last book in the Get Set! Series. The Big Mutt-Dog Mud Run has 270 words. Our first red chapter book in Step 1 is The Dog on the Log. It has 300 words. As the series progresses, the chapter books grow to over 8,000 words. Like all DOG ON A LOG decodables, you have two options. You can buy the readers individually or bound together in a single volume. The single volumes are more economical, but not all kids want books with that many pages. You can see our red chapter books here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/#chapter-books

Kids, especially older kids who have found reading hard, love that they get to carry around books that look like the books that big kids are reading. Multiple teachers have told us that kids are thrilled they are reading books so long that they need bookmarks. (add link for bookmark page once it’s made)

However, not every kid is ready to read our chapter books. A 300-word book can be intimidating for a lot of new or striving readers. Other kids have not learned and mastered all the phonics rules in our chapter books yet. We have solutions for these new readers and the people who are teaching them:

Parent and Teacher Guides: We have four books written for parents and teachers. Teaching a Struggling Reader:One Mom's Experience with Dyslexia Answers the questions I wish I had known to ask when I first wondered if our daughter has dyslexia.

Prepare For Reading (Activities for Pre-Readers) Contains simple activities to help children understand the sounds we hear in spoken language. This will help them as they learn to put sounds together to make the words they read. Learn to Read (Letters Make Words) Guides Parents and Teachers in teaching the letters and how to blend them into words.

Teach Reading with Decodable Books Describes activities parents and teachers can use to teach their students advancing phonics skills and reading. You can see our books for parents and teachers here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/parent-and-teacher/

Get Ready Readers: These have the traceable letters and decodable content from our Parent and Teacher Guide Learn toRead (Letters Make Words). Theyhave kid-friendly formattingand fun illustrations. Like all DOG ON A LOG decodables, youhave two options. You can buy the readers individually or boundtogether in a single volume. The single volumes are moreeconomical, but not all kids want books with that many pages.
You can see our blue Get Ready! Readers here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/get-ready/

Get Set! Readers: Our newest series picks up where the last Get Ready! Reader finished. This set of books has words with just two or three letters and no additional phonics. It gives kids who need more practice with the 26 letters before moving on to Step 1 where they will be reading words with consonant digraphs and the possessive ‘s.
You can see our teal Get Set! Readers here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/get-set/

Let’s GO! Readers: Not every kid is ready to read a 300-1,000 word (or more) chapter book. They get overwhelmed by the number of words on the page and going several pages without the break of a picture. We NEVER want kids to use the pictures for guessing the words, but we know that too many pages of words is hard for some kids. Our purple Let’s GO! Readers are the same titles, stories, and pictures as our red Chapter Books, but with a lot less words. For every page with words, there is a picture right beside it. (Sometimes it helps to cover the picture with a piece of paper while the student reads, then uncover the picture as a reward for their hard work.) Each book has about eight to ten pages of the story along with eight to ten pictures.

You can use the purple Let’s GO! Readers as bridges to the red chapter books. You can tell your student. “You read the purple book and did a great job. I bet you are ready for the red chapter book. It will have the same words with the same phonics. You know how to read those words so I am sure you can read the red book. Plus, we get to learn more about what happened in the story. We’ll take our time reading it. There’s no hurry.”

We get emails from parents and teachers that tell us our Let’s GO! Readers are the first books their kids were willing to read.

There are 25 purple Let’s GO! Readers with the same titles as the first 25 red chapter books. This represents the first five Steps of phonics in our sequence. You can purchase them individually or as collection volumes. The collection volumes have all five books from a single Step of phonics. You can see our purple Let’s GO! Readers here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/#lets-go

My daughter has severe dyslexia. When she was learning to read, there were very few decodable books available. None of our local bookstores or libraries carried decodable books so I tried ordering books online. Mainly I found books labeled “Beginning Phonics Books.” They actually contained words like ‘leaves’ and ‘Wednesday.’ She would have refused to read altogether if I had given her those books.

When I finally found decodable books, most had just eight sentences. She would memorize the books before she could master the phonics. My joke was she could read the books without opening the covers. However, that left her with no books where she could practice her fledgling reading skills.

Then I thought how I am a writer. I could write books for her. My next thought was that other families would need these books as well. At that moment, in the grocery store parking lot, DOG ON A LOG Books was born.

If your child cannot tell you the first and last sounds in a word you SAY to them, you might need to start by teaching them how sounds make words. Our book Prepare For Reading (Activities for Pre-Readers) is filled with activities to help you do this.

You can find our Parent and Teachers Guide Prepare For Reading (Activities for Pre-Readers) here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/parent-and-teacher/

If your child can tell you the first and last sounds in a word you SAY to them, but does not know all the letters and cannot sound out many or any words, you might want to start with our Get Ready! Readers that introduce a few letters at a time. Our Parent and Teachers book, Learn to Read (Letters Make Words,) will guide you in teaching the letters and how to sound out words.

You can see our books for parents and teachers here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/parent-and-teacher/

You can see our blue Get Ready! Readers here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/get-ready/

If your child can read words with the five short vowel sounds and all the primary consonant sounds, but they are not confident with those words, you may want to have them read our Get Set Readers and Chapter Book:

You can see our Get Set! Books here: https://dogonalogbooks.com/books/get-set/

If your child is confident reading three letter words with a short vowel in the middle, they are probably ready to read either our red chapter books or our shorter purple Let’s GO! Readers.

To determine where in the series to start, you can download our Quick Assessment Tool: https://dogonalogbooks.com/about/quick-assessment-tool/

DOG ON A LOG Books were written for MY daughter with our family’s values of respect, kindness, service to others, curiosity, a
sense of adventure, and dogs. Just like our home-life, you will find dogs everywhere you turn in DOG ON A LOG Books.

All the books have happy endings. Sometimes the world of pretend seems real (even to the parents,) like the time Lil discovers a talking musk ox in her tub. And while I will not share any spoilers, the parents believe the ending of Trip to Cactus Gulch 2: Into the Mineshaft and even help Dave and Quin search out The Rewind Clock.

A few of the books are from the perspective of an animal. In The Cub, a lost cub looks for his mother. In The Junk Lot Cat, a cat and his family must be moved after the junk yard has been sold.

Most of the books are about loving families and kids having fun. In The Map, Quin finds a map and he and his dad drive around town to see where the map will take them. In Raft Club, Russ, Dave, and Quin get to build a raft they can compete in. In Frank’s Truck, Russ and Fran get to go with their dad when he is called to help a stranded driver. In The Chicken Bus Express to the Redo Shop, the kids are tasked with taking baked goods to an elderly neighbor and to deliver her recycling to the Redo Shop. And maybe, just maybe, as the kids climb into their wagon called The Chicken Bus, they exaggerate just how long the hill in front of them is.