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 […]
Read MoreReading Difficulties
Can SEND children learn to read with phonics?
Here at Phonic Books we have been publishing decodable books for beginner and catch-up readers for seventeen years. During those years we attended many conferences and education shows. When discussing whether our books were suited to students with Special Educational Needs, we always deferred to the teachers working in SEND settings. While we were confident […]
Read MoreSplit digraph, Vowel+e, Bossy e, Silent e, magic e – why and how to teach it
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’ […]
Read MoreThis summer – an opportunity for catch up reading
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 […]
Read MoreHomophones – what to do about them?
What are homophones? Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. The word ‘homophone’ has a Greek origin. ‘Homo’ meaning ‘same’ and ‘phone’ meaning ‘sound’. So, the word ‘homophone’ means a same-sounding words that have different meanings. Some homophones have the same spellings for example, the words ‘row’ as in ‘to row […]
Read MoreWhat is reading? – what I should have learned in teacher training
When I trained to be a teacher in one of the best universities in London, I learned a great deal about the wonderful world of books, how to select quality picture books and spot racially biased books, and even how to make books by stitching them together by hand. We made book covers using potato […]
Read MoreSupercalifragilisticexpialidocious – scaffolding the teaching of multisyllabic words
Scaffolding the teaching of multisyllabic words – simple to complex Many teachers are focused on teaching children how to sound out graphemes (spellings) and to 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. […]
Read MoreWhat is the point of pointing?
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 […]
Read MoreHow to write a word chain
Word chains are really important for all children learning to read, especially struggling readers. Some programmes call this activity ‘Sound swap’ (Sounds-Write) or ‘Switch it’ (Reading Simplified). Why word chains are a useful teaching tool Word chains offer children practice of the underlying skills of reading: blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation (adding, deleting and swapping […]
Read MoreWhy we should be teaching phonemic awareness to address learning loss and equity
I recently listened to a webinar by Dr Susan Brady and there some really important points I wanted to summarise for busy teachers. Focus what is supported by evidence to accelerate learning We are now racing against time to reverse the learning loss that took place over COVID. It is so important that we focus […]
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