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 […]
Read MoreLearning to Read
What’s going on with ‘Letters and Sounds’?
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 […]
Read MoreWhat is phonemic awareness and why we should teach it
We know that phonological awareness is one of the 6 components of learning to read: phonological awareness – being able to identify sounds in words which includes, syllables, rhyme, alliteration and phonemes. phonics – to recognise letters and combination of […]
Read MoreHow to teach blending
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/ […]
Read MoreHow to teach using our Dragon Eggs Series
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 […]
Read MoreDecodable reading quest books for building fluency
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 […]
Read MoreWhy the Phonics Check is not just for Year 1
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 […]
Read MoreWhat is a schwa sound?
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 […]
Read MoreDecodable Books – What’s the Point?
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 […]
Read MoreHow decodable texts contribute to reading fluency and comprehension
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 […]
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