How it is Organized
There are two sets of Jump Rope Readers, A and B. Set A is designed for readers in kindergarten and early first grade. Set B is designed for readers in first grade and early second grade. Together, the sets gradually stretch readers to the point where they can successfully tackle early trade books
Phonics skills progress across the readers with the earliest foundational skills introduced in Set A, Box 1, and then skills are developed across Box 2 and into Set B.
Boxes are available separately so, for example, grade 1 teachers can add Set A, Box 2 to their libraries if students need practice in those earlier skills. We recommend that all classrooms start with the complete Set A or Set B and then add on as needed.
Using Decodable Texts in your Classroom
In addition to marvelous picture books and engaging trade books, your classroom library needs lots of decodable books, including Jump Rope Readers. Decodable books give children all-important opportunities to apply the phonics they are learning in continuous texts.
- You’ll want to audit your classroom library and plan to add many high-quality decodable readers for children to encounter, engage with independently, and add to their partner and table bins and book baggies as texts they can read successfully on their own.
- When children are just beginning to read, you’ll curate the contents of their bins or baggies so that children are able to have success reading the books in their bins.
- Bins or baggies that you curate for your early readers will contain copies of a few songs or poems the children have read together countless times, as well as books they can have success with.
- In very early kindergarten, the books you channel kids toward may be look-at books, such as the browsable nonfiction books that so enthrall children, and they may be the predictable rhyming books that you have helped them read as a class.
- As soon as children know enough letter-sound correspondences to begin decoding words, some of the books in their bins and baggies will be decodable books that are especially written to allow children to practice that work. These books offer kids many opportunities to apply the phonics they’ve learned.
- By first and second grade, you’ll probably invite children to choose for themselves many of the books in their bins and baggies. At the same time, you’ll regularly add decodable books to their bins and baggies, so that they can continue to receive lots of practice with the phonics they have been taught.
- Because the Jump Rope Readers offer engaging plot lines and natural-sounding language, they set children up to practice comprehension and fluency work in addition to decoding.