What if a young illiterate man had not travelled to New York from the Bahamas to find work? What if he hadn’t been rejected from the American Negro Theatre in Harlem because he couldn’t read? What if he hadn’t had […]

Teach Tier 2 words for reading comprehension   We know that vocabulary is one of the five elements that make a fluent, confident reader. These five are: phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, vocabulary and fluency.   While phonics and phonemic awareness […]

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 […]

English is complex and we need to teach reading in a structured way from simple to complex.  Unfortunately, there is no avoiding high-frequency words with spellings the children haven’t learned yet because they are present in even the simplest of […]

In my previous blog post I mentioned I was lucky enough to listen in to a much sought after webinar given by the Reading Ape.  Well, I came away with another rethink: “Spelling helps reading more than reading helps spelling,” […]

I recently listened to the much anticipated webinar given by the Reading Ape.  (If you haven’t heard of the elusive Reading Ape, do check out the website which has fantastic research-based articles about reading.)  Anyway, the Reading Ape discussed the […]

Now that kids are back in school, teachers must make sure that they have solid foundations for reading.  These foundations will ensure reading success throughout their education and beyond.  Who knows what exciting opportunities lay ahead for our young readers?  […]

Another lovely review from a happy customer… “Phonic books provide an exciting, engaging, relevant and real reading opportunity for pupils at different stages of their reading journey. The books are carefully tailored to provide meaningful reading content that remains of […]

All phonics programmes should have a ‘scope and sequence’ but what does this actually mean? ‘Scope’ means what you are teaching When teaching reading with systematic phonics, ‘scope’ means teaching the alphabetic code. English has 44 sounds and more than […]

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 […]

Many children will have failed to reach their reading attainment last year due to missing school and the inevitable patchy learning during periods of lock-down.  On top of that, we now have the ‘summer slump’ when pupils seem to have […]

The 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 […]