Alba Series from Phonic Books Reviewed by SNIP (Special Needs Information Press) July 2013
Stories by Clair Baker, illustrated by Drew Wilson
Summary of the review:
- Alba Series is a new series of books specifically designed for girls who have gaps in their phonic knowledge. These books have a reading age appropriate for KS1 pupils but have an interest level which is more appropriate for pupils aged between 8-14 years.
- This series, like its predecessors, is well structured with plenty of additional help for the reader.
- The stories in the series are supplemented by colourful stimulating illustrations which will be appealing to the reader.
- Phonic Books have produced another well constructed and considered resource with plenty of support and consolidation activities to accompany the texts.
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The Alba Series is a new series of books specifically designed for girls who have gaps in their phonic knowledge. These books have a reading age appropriate for KS1 pupils but have an interest level which is more appropriate for pupils aged between 8-14 years. The books tell a story of Alba, whose father is a scientist trying to save apple trees from being destroyed by bugs. Alba becomes involved in many adventures in her quest to help her father.
There are twelve books in the series with a phonic progression similar to the Totem Series. They begin at CVC level with initial and final blends, followed by consonant digraphs. Books in the middle and towards the end of the series progress onto long vowel sounds, such as ‘ae’, ‘ee’, ‘oo’, ‘ie’ and r digraphs.
This series, like its predecessors, is well structured with plenty of additional help for the reader. Initial pages have reading practice involving targeted words found in the story, as well as a vocabulary page to establish or recollect meaning. Two beat words used in the text are split into syllables to help the decoding process. The stories in the series are supplemented by colourful stimulating illustrations which will be appealing to the reader.
To complement the readers, Phonic Books have produced a workbook to accompany the series. The twelve chapters in the workbook correlate to the twelve books in the series and each chapter contains activities based on the target phoneme of each of the books. Before reading the books it is recommended that practice takes place of the word-building, blending, reading and sorting activities. There are also follow-up activities, such as comprehension, spelling and writing which can be completed after reading the book. All the activities are fully photocopiable and notes for teachers are supplied to help with the administration of the scheme.
Phonic Books have produced another well constructed and considered resource with plenty of support and consolidation activities to accompany the texts.
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