Decodable Books Created to Align with the UFLI Foundations Scope and Sequence

UFLI Foundations is an explicit, systematic phonics curriculum developed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute for early readers. Its lessons follow a set order, moving from letter sounds and short vowels to digraphs, silent e, word endings, r-controlled vowels and vowel teams. The decodable books on this page are original Bookbot stories, written independently to give children extra reading practice for the UFLI lessons they cover.

A scope and sequence is the planned order in which phonics skills are taught, so each lesson builds on the sounds and spellings before it. On this page, the lessons that have books are grouped into bands such as Digraphs, VCe and soft c and g, R-controlled vowels, and Vowel teams and diphthongs. To choose a book, open the lesson your child or class has just been taught and read one of its stories.

Some of the books in each lesson on this page are free to read online, and many free titles also include read-along audio or a printable PDF, depending on the title. They sit well alongside UFLI decodable passages because they give children a longer story that uses the same sounds and spellings. A study from the University of Chicago found that a digital library for parent-child shared reading improved literacy skills for young children from disadvantaged families.

Decodable books are a bridge, not a permanent stage. Once a child can read most new words accurately by sounding them out, including vowel teams and longer words, they are ready for a much wider mix of books. Jeanne Chall’s Stages of Reading Development (1983) describes this shift from decoding to confident, fluent reading, which for many children happens around second and third grade. Learn more about decodable text and how it works.