I love the way Christopher Such writes about teaching reading, and if you haven’t read his book The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading – do. I have found it is very accessible and really useful for busy teachers to keep up with recent research into reading instruction. What I like most about his […]
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Ann Sullivan of Phonics for Pupils with Special Educational Needs is an experienced SEND teacher, who has created her own phonics programme specifically for SEND children. This is what she has to say about our latest set of Books: Moon Dogs Extras for Catch-Up Readers. If there is one question I am asked more than […]
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Here at Phonic Books we have been publishing decodable books for beginner and catch-up readers for seventeen years. During those years we attended many conferences and education shows. When discussing whether our books were suited to students with SEND, we always deferred to the teachers working in SEND settings. While we were confident teaching dyslexic […]
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The split digraphs ‘a-e’, ‘e-e’, ‘i-e’, ‘o-e’, ‘u-e’ are very common spellings. They have different names: Silent e, Magic e, Vowel Consonant e, Bossy e, Split digraphs. Many children struggle to read words with these spelling patterns, so we need to teach them explicitly. Why do we have these spelling patterns in English? The ‘e’ […]
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Here we are in the last term of school and soon the summer will be upon us. It is really important that during this summer, the ‘summer slump’ of learning loss will not add to the learning loss that has already impacted so many children during the last two years. A good way to prevent […]
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Multisensory learning is when a child uses a number of senses to experience a learning activity. This could be seeing, hearing and touching or manipulating letters. We experience the world with our senses and these allow us to absorb and learn new things. Learning in a multisensory way helps children remember what they have learned […]
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What are homophones? Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. The word ‘homophone’ has a Greek origin: ‘Homo’ meaning ‘same’ and ‘phone’ meaning ‘sound’. So, the word ‘homophone’ means same-sounding words that have different meanings. Some homophones have the same spellings: for example, the words ‘row’ as in ‘to row a […]
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Many teachers are now using decodable books to help their beginner readers practice the phonics taught in classroom lessons. This is because it is now accepted that decodable texts, which are controlled texts, help children develop decoding, and decoding ability is an essential skill for learning to read. It is important that the books match […]
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The verb ‘to dictate’ is not one that teachers warm to. This is because we love to foster creativity in our children and to get them to write their own ideas. BUT when teaching children how to read and spell we need to use all the best tools we have to instruct our beginner readers […]
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When I trained to be a teacher in one of the best universities in London, I learned a great deal about the wonderful world of books, how to select quality picture books and spot racially biased books, and even how to make books by stitching them together by hand. We made book covers using potato […]
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