UFLI Foundations in Australia and Tasmania: My Journey Creating Decodable Books to Support the Program

There is an exciting shift happening in reading instruction around the world.

More teachers, schools and literacy specialists are looking closely at the science behind how children learn to read and moving towards explicit, systematic phonics instruction.

One program that is becoming increasingly familiar to educators is UFLI Foundations.

Developed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute, UFLI Foundations provides teachers with an explicit and systematic approach to teaching foundational reading skills. Its carefully sequenced lessons help children build phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, decoding, encoding and reading fluency step by step.

What began in the United States is now reaching classrooms much further afield, and the growth of UFLI Foundations in Australia is particularly exciting.

For me, as a New Zealand teacher, author and creator of Innerlinks Decodable Books, it is also incredibly rewarding.

Innerlinks is one of the decodable book series recommended on UFLI Foundations' own official decodable text guide, a credential I still don't take for granted.

Innerlinks began with the goal of creating engaging decodable books to support the progression of UFLI Foundations.

Today, that journey has taken another exciting step: Innerlinks Decodable Books are now stocked and distributed in Australia by SPELD NSW.

UFLI Foundations is gaining momentum in Australia

The development of a dedicated Australian Edition of UFLI Foundations is a strong indication of the program's growing relevance to Australian classrooms.

UFLI now provides an Australian Foundations Toolbox containing lesson resources specifically designed to accompany the Australian Edition of the program.

The Australian resources allow teachers to use the same explicit and carefully sequenced instructional approach while working with materials suited to Australian English.

For Australian teachers searching for structured literacy programs and evidence-based phonics instruction, UFLI Foundations is becoming an increasingly familiar name.

How my own Australia journey began

My personal connection to Australia's UFLI community goes back further than the current momentum in Tasmania.

On 13 July 2023, I travelled to the DSF Institute in West Perth for a day of professional learning with Dr. Holly Lane of the University of Florida Literacy Institute, who led the training alongside her colleague Dr. Valentina Contesse, hosted by DSF Literacy and Clinical Services. It was the first UFLI training available in Australia, and I had already been using UFLI Foundations in my own practice for eighteen months by that point, so this was my chance to get proper intensive training directly from the person who created the program.

That day was where I met Holly Lane in person. I showed her the Innerlinks books I had been creating to support the UFLI progression, and not long after, Innerlinks was added as a recommended decodable text resource on UFLI Foundations' own official decodable text guide.

That moment is really where this whole journey began, long before SPELD NSW came on board, long before Tasmania made headlines. It started with a trip to Perth and a conversation with the person who created the program I had built my books around.

But nowhere is the current shift more interesting than in Tasmania.

Tasmania's growing commitment to UFLI Foundations

Tasmania has made significant changes to the way reading is taught in its government schools.

The Tasmanian Department for Education, Children and Young People has identified UFLI Foundations and Word Origins as preferred literacy programs for primary schools, with resources and professional learning centrally supported.

Perhaps most strikingly, the department reported that 88% of Tasmanian government schools committed to implementing UFLI Foundations in Prep–Year 2 classes in 2025.

That is a significant level of adoption.

For anyone interested in structured literacy, systematic phonics and the Science of Reading, Tasmania is becoming an important part of the Australian literacy conversation.

And it creates another important question:

Once we have explicitly taught children a phonics concept, what are we giving them to read?

Teaching phonics is only part of the journey

Explicit phonics instruction is incredibly important.

But children also need repeated opportunities to apply the code they have been taught to connected text.

This is where decodable books can play such an important role.

When children are asked to read books containing too many spelling patterns they have not yet learned, reading can quickly turn into guessing.

They may look at the picture.

They may use the first letter.

They may try to remember what the word looks like.

Or, for children who have already experienced difficulty with reading, they may simply decide that reading is something they cannot do.

A well-sequenced decodable book changes that experience.

The child can look at the letters, connect them with the sounds they have been taught, blend those sounds together and work out the word for themselves.

That feeling of:

"I read that."

is incredibly powerful.

Why I started writing Innerlinks Decodable Books

Innerlinks wasn't created because I simply wanted to write children's books.

It grew from what I was seeing as a teacher and from my own family's experience of dyslexia.

I had seen children become frustrated with reading.

I had seen reluctant readers lose confidence.

And I had seen what could happen when the books placed in front of a learner required knowledge that had not yet been explicitly taught.

I wanted to create something different.

One of the experiences that stayed with me involved working with a neurodivergent student.

We began creating a story together. I wrote and he drew.

As the story developed, he looked at what we had created and commented on how cool it was.

That small moment had a big impact on me.

Here was a child who found literacy difficult, suddenly engaging with a story and taking ownership of it.

It made me think deeply about the books we give struggling and reluctant readers.

Why should a controlled or decodable text have to feel boring?

Why couldn't it have characters children connected with?

Why couldn't it have humour, personality and illustrations that made children curious about what happened next?

And most importantly:

Why couldn't a child practise exactly what they had been taught while still feeling that they were reading a real story?

That became the starting point for Innerlinks.

Creating decodable books to support the UFLI progression

When I began developing Innerlinks, I wanted the phonics progression behind the books to be just as important as the stories themselves.

That is why the Innerlinks series was created to closely support the UFLI Foundations scope and sequence.

Rather than simply putting the label "decodable" on a book, I wanted teachers to be able to look at where a student was in their phonics learning and select a book that provided meaningful practice of that knowledge.

The principle behind it is simple:

Teach the skill. Practise the skill. Read the skill. Build automaticity.

As children's knowledge of the alphabetic code grows, the books progress with them.

The stories also become increasingly sophisticated so that children continue to encounter engaging characters and meaningful narratives while strengthening their decoding skills.

This matters particularly for children who require more repetition and consolidation.

Not every child develops automaticity after one lesson.

Some need to encounter the same grapheme–phoneme correspondence many times and in many different words before it becomes secure.

Additional decodable texts give teachers another way to provide that practice.

Decodable doesn't have to mean dull

One of my strongest beliefs when creating Innerlinks has always been that decodability and engagement should not be competing goals.

Children who find reading difficult are often the very children who need the most motivation to keep trying.

So although the phonics progression is carefully controlled, I also put enormous emphasis on the characters, illustrations, humour and storylines.

I want children to want to find out what happens next.

The goal is not simply to get a child to the end of a book.

The goal is to help them become a reader.

Decoding leads towards fluency.

Fluency gives children greater capacity to focus on meaning.

And eventually, the attention that once had to go into working out individual words can be used to understand, enjoy and think about the story.

Innerlinks is now distributed in Australia by SPELD NSW

One of the most exciting milestones in the Innerlinks journey has been establishing a relationship with SPELD NSW as our Australian distributor.

Innerlinks Decodable Books are now stocked by SPELD NSW, making the books much easier for Australian teachers, schools, tutors, intervention specialists and families to access locally.

SPELD NSW includes Innerlinks among its range of decodable readers for students learning to read and describes the books as providing additional practice for students who need further consolidation of the basic phonics code.

For me, this partnership means a great deal.

SPELD organisations have played an important role for many years in supporting people with dyslexia and specific learning difficulties and in advocating for evidence-based literacy instruction.

To now see Innerlinks sitting within the SPELD NSW decodable reader collection alongside other established literacy resources is something I am extremely proud of.

It also creates an important connection for Australian educators.

Teachers using UFLI Foundations in Australia can now purchase Innerlinks Decodable Books from an established Australian literacy organisation rather than having to source all of their resources internationally.

Why this is particularly relevant for Tasmanian schools

With the widespread implementation of UFLI Foundations in Tasmania, teachers will increasingly need a strong bank of reading material that allows children to consolidate what they are learning.

UFLI provides its own connected text and lesson resources, but children often benefit from encountering taught phonics concepts across multiple texts and different contexts.

Additional decodable books can help teachers provide that extra practice.

For a teacher using UFLI Foundations, the question becomes:

What has this child been taught, and what can I now give them to read successfully?

That is the connection I want Innerlinks to support.

The books are not intended to replace UFLI Foundations.

They are designed to sit alongside explicit instruction, giving children another opportunity to transfer the phonics knowledge they have been taught into real reading.

A New Zealand resource with an Australian future

Innerlinks began here in New Zealand.

At the time, I was trying to solve a problem I could see directly in front of me: children needed carefully sequenced texts, but they also deserved books that respected them as readers.

I could never have imagined at the beginning that those books would eventually be reaching classrooms beyond New Zealand.

Seeing the growth of UFLI Foundations in Australia, and particularly the extraordinary commitment being made in Tasmania, makes this an exciting time for Innerlinks.

Our countries share many of the same literacy challenges.

We also share a growing determination to make sure children receive the explicit instruction they need rather than being expected to discover the reading code for themselves.

For children who find learning to read difficult, that change matters enormously.

The future of reading instruction feels hopeful

There is still much to learn and much work to do.

But I find the direction of literacy education increasingly hopeful.

Teachers are asking important questions.

Schools are investing in structured literacy.

Educators are becoming more knowledgeable about the alphabetic code.

And programs such as UFLI Foundations are giving teachers practical, explicit ways to translate the Science of Reading into classroom instruction.

Tasmania's adoption of UFLI Foundations provides a fascinating example of what can happen when that change occurs at scale.

For me, the mission behind Innerlinks remains the same as it was when I started.

Children deserve to know what it feels like to successfully read a book for themselves.

Not guess it.

Not memorise it.

Not wait for someone else to tell them the word.

Read it.

And then want to read another one.

Looking for UFLI-aligned decodable books in Australia?

If you are an Australian teacher, school, literacy specialist, tutor or parent using UFLI Foundations, Innerlinks Decodable Books provide additional opportunities for children to practise the phonics knowledge they have been explicitly taught.

Innerlinks Decodable Books are stocked and distributed in Australia by SPELD NSW and are also available directly from Innerlinks.

Explore Innerlinks for Australian classrooms

Created in New Zealand. Distributed in Australia by SPELD NSW. Supporting confident readers wherever they are learning.