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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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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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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Scaffolding the teaching of multisyllabic words – simple to complex Many teachers are focused on teaching children how to sound out graphemes (spellings) and blend sounds together into words. They will even be teaching children how to manipulate phonemes in phonemic awareness activities. These are all essential underlying skills necessary for learning to read. These activities […]
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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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