I have recently listened to two podcasts about working memory and they’ve made me think how we teach reading, specifically, how we help children with blending sounds into words: Evidence Based Education Podcast – Trialled and Tested: Working Memory: https://evidencebased.education/working-memory/ […]

See our Dragon Eggs series in action! An exemplary 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: how the teacher makes sure […]

The Dragon Eggs Series is a set of 10 decodable books that combine revision of those tricky vowel digraphs and an exciting, beautifully-illustrated quest with dragons in it! Designed to engage children and secure their Alphabetic Code knowledge and reading […]

    We often get asked where do we get the inspiration for our books? It comes in many forms but below is just a snippet of how our latest series of books Dragon Eggs was conceived and brought to […]

*** Competition Time*** To support the launch of our Dragon Eggs Series, we’d like to invite teachers and educators far and wide to get involved in our ‘Draw a Dragon’ Competition. Simply download the templates below and follow the instructions […]

I recently had a Zoom meeting with a Year 6 teacher who discussed how a number of his pupils were struggling with reading and he said he was using the Year 1 phonics check to assess them.  This may seem […]

What is a schwa sound? And – did you know it is the most common sound in the English language? A schwa sound is a weak vowel sound in an unstressed syllable.  Here is an explanation: Most multi-syllabic words in […]

I 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 […]

Reading 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 […]

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 […]

Many of our students will need a boost to their vocabulary. This may be because they have missed out on learning, or that remote learning is not as effective as in-school learning (especially for children with a learning disability). As […]

  It is that time of year and although, in this COVID year everything seems subdued, we have the Christmas messages, wishes and advertising everywhere.  Children will be busy writing lists for Santa and decorating Christmas cards. You just can’t […]