Often when I read with a pupil, I need to remind her/him (and myself) to point to the words. As fluent readers we don’t point to words on the page, but sometimes if we come across a difficult or new word we are trying to work out – we will use our finger to work […]
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Beginner readers need a great deal of practice. Where possible, sending home decodable books is an important opportunity for reading practice. It is difficult for the teacher or teaching assistant to hear every child read every day or even every week. So, an adult reading at home with the child has a very significant role […]
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Decodable books have a very specific and limited purpose in the process of learning to read. They provide reading practice as children learn to use the sound/letter correspondences they have been taught and the strategy of blending sounds. As their code knowledge grows, children will be able to apply it to ‘authentic’ texts. Authentic texts […]
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On many occasions, especially at conferences, teachers have said to us, “You have gone ahead and done what I always dreamed of doing!” They describe how every lesson they write decodable stories for their pupils and thought what a good idea it would be to actually publish them! Well, that is how Phonic Books got […]
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Decodable books build ‘reading muscle’ – another great post from Spelfabet. If you are wondering why kids need to read decodable books in order to become fluent readers – here is the answer! All adults can find listening to beginner readers agonising and at times, it can be hard work for both the child and […]
Read MoreThe Department for Education has announced that is it ‘retiring’ the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme which was published in 2007. In its place, it is asking publishers to submit their phonics programmes for revalidation. Initially, the DfE planned to update ‘Letters and Sounds’ but then decided to allow schools to create programmes, based on their […]
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See our Dragon Eggs series in action! A shining example of teaching with our Dragon Eggs Series… Observe how the reader practises decoding, but also encounters new words that develop vocabulary. Note the exemplary teaching: the teacher makes sure new words are explained and that decoding is accurate. This is a great example of the […]
Read MoreI read this post and thought it was really worth reposting. It explains in simple and sympathetic language why decodable books have an important role to play in learning to read. New Zealand has been slow in adopting Systematic Synthetic Phonics, but things are changing for the better. This is a really worth a read! […]
Read MoreReading fluency is a precondition for reading comprehension. If the reader is not fluent he/she will struggle to put the words together in a sentence and make meaning of it. When short term memory is taken up by working out what the words are on the page, it can’t focus on what they mean. So […]
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Many schools are moving away from teaching children to recognise whole words to teaching them how to decode. It is important for anyone reading with children, or teaching them to read, to understand why this is so significant. The approach of teaching kids to recognise whole words is a ‘top down’ approach. It requires children […]
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