Find out all you need to know about the Phonic Books Dandelion Series Check out our leaflet to find out more about our Dandelion Series and to answer any questions you may have: What is decoding? What are decodable books? Why Phonic Books decodable books? What is the scope and sequence? What titles are in […]
Read More
For children to comprehend a text, they need to read it fluently. If the reading is disfluent, the reader will struggle to hold onto all the information needed to comprehend a sentence or paragraph. We know that reading fluency has three components: Accuracy – children need to be able to read words accurately. If they […]
Read More
It is not uncommon for reading interventionists to encounter students who try to use words within words as a spelling strategy. Some teachers may think that helping students remember how to spell a word that they can already spell, e.g., the word ‘hat’, may be useful to teach the word ‘that’. They then teach the […]
Read More
Scarborough’s Reading Rope is a wonderful theoretical framework for describing the complexity of reading and what we need to teach children in order for them to become fluent readers who can comprehend a text successfully. Decoding is on one strand of the rope, and language comprehension is on the other strand. These strands become increasingly […]
Read MoreTami Reis-Frankfort, one of the founders of Phonic Books, has been thinking of how to organise a complex Alphabetic Code. *** The English Alphabetic Code is complex. How can we help children learn a code that has 176+ spellings for 44 sounds that uses only 26 letters of the alphabet? If we understand the Alphabetic […]
Read More
If asked, many early years and special school teachers would probably say that one of the first things children should learn is to recognise, and later write, their name. One single word, yet many children seem to find this difficult and it can take a surprisingly long time to achieve. The main reason for this […]
Read More
“My child gets 10/10 on their spelling tests but then forgets their spellings when free writing.” This is a statement that I often hear from parents. In schools, children typically get a weekly spelling list which they practise and then get tested on at a single word level. The next week, they receive a new […]
Read More
What do we mean by ‘sound it out’ and what does it entail? When a child gets stuck on a word we often remind them to ‘sound it out’. As fluent readers, we assume this is very straightforward. We recognise these words automatically and skip all the stages that beginner readers need to go through […]
Read More
“Let’s make learning fun!” I always do a silent inner eye roll when I hear that phrase. The exclamation is loaded. Loaded with unspoken messages. The first message is that whatever we are currently doing with our pupils must be as dull as ditch water and needs jazzing up. We are urged to bring ‘magic’ […]
Read More
All too often, our classroom libraries offer a wonderful selection of fiction but only a limited amount of non-fiction. Why should we ensure that children have access to a wonderful range of non-fiction books? 1. Non-fiction books are fun Firstly, because so many non-fiction books published today are an absolute joy to read. With amazing […]
Read More
