Usborne Phonics Readers - 12 Book Set

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A Year 11 pupil in another school explained how he went to read one-to-one with an adult when he was in Year 10. This pupil explained how this ‘has helped develop my reading confidence and reading out loud’. For these pupils, confidence and motivation went hand in hand. Pupils felt more confident, and were therefore more motivated to engage with reading, and read more. A Beka Phonics Readers start very slow, and they only introduce six sounds at once. These are perfect for readers just starting out. The text is large and accessible for the youngest readers. For example, the Little Books your child can sound out: Some schools also shared information on support strategies for individual pupils. This meant there was a consistent approach to how classroom teachers and support staff incorporated the learning from interventions with specialist teachers. Monitoring the impact of additional teaching and knowing what works Training supported an ethos that valued and understood the importance of investing in reading and staff working together to help struggling readers. This culture of collaboration was evident in our discussions with staff. One reading support teacher said: secondary school visits – to collect first-hand evidence from pupils, teachers and senior leaders about what schools do to help struggling readers

Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words. Many of these children who are coming to us with such a low reading age already have probably had intervention after intervention at primary school and it hasn’t worked, so they need something different. The priority that senior leaders gave reading, and their investment in reading, meant it had a high status across the school. Teachers and support staff all said it was part of their role to help struggling readers. Teachers expressed this by saying ‘reading is everyone’s business’, and ‘we are all teachers of reading’. Additional teaching for struggling readers was the responsibility of specialist teaching staff, but this was helped by the staff’s awareness of how they could support struggling readers in their own subjects. As one member of support staff said: Phonological awareness extends into phonics when a child understands that letters make sounds and those letters create words. In 2000, the National Reading Panel released its report, and they concluded, without room for doubt, that early instruction in phonics is the best way to teach children how to read. This expansive study researched letter-sound correspondence (phonics) versus the “look-say,” or whole language, teaching that had been a struggling method since the 1950’s. They unanimously found that phonics is the best approach to early reading.

First, your child will be taught the most straightforward letters and the sounds they make. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents an mmm sound and the letters ‘oa’ represent an oh sound. The most widely used approach associated with the teaching of reading in which phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word. Analytical phonics

Pupils told us how teachers would talk to them about reading. For example, one Year 7 pupil said that his teacher would recommend new books because they ‘know what I like’. Other teachers talked about the importance of knowing their pupils and knowing their interests, so they could recommend books they might be interested in or broaden their horizons by introducing them to new authors. The role of librarians When I first joined the school I had to go out a couple of times and do some reading tests with teachers. I started to go into that [reading support] and it helps me a lot with my reading. I don’t stutter as much as I used to.’ We also saw how additional help for struggling readers was part of a wider whole-school strategy to improve the reading of all pupils. This meant that as well as additional teaching in the foundational components of reading, such as accurate word reading and fluency, struggling readers benefited from teaching across the curriculum that focused on the vocabulary knowledge needed for comprehension and subject-specific reading. Annex A: detailed research methods There’s no coordinated strategy for that vital group of pupils to access the curriculum because their reading skill is so low. The English department identify their weak readers and have their own strategy about what to do in English lessons, but not actually talking to the SENCo [special educational needs coordinator]. There’s no kind of synergy there.’

Next, they will learn how sounds can be put together ( blended) to make words. For example, they will learn that the sounds of the letters ‘m-a-t’ blend together to make the word ‘mat’. Your child will then learn more sounds and will start blending them too. CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words are progressively learned with delightful, full-colored pictures. The only downside to these readers (and it’s a big issue to note) is that Abeka’s program learns all the vowels in their first little book. Learning the vowels — because they all sound so similar to a child just becoming phonologically aware — is not beneficial for most children.

Diagnostic tests included DiaPhon, Diagnostic Reading Analysis, Test of Word Reading Efficiency and Fresh Start. The release of this report does not mean that we should let go of “sight words.” Certainly children need to know those too! The core of reading instruction should be based on phonics patterns and methods. Of course we, as adults, do not sound out the words we read; so our goal is for children to commit words to memory for both reading and spelling. But for beginning readers, it is most beneficial to sound it out. In contrast, other secondary schools are treating pupils as individuals and building up a complete picture of their barriers to reading. One HMI said:An approach to the teaching of reading in which phonics forms one part of a whole language programme. Embedded phonics differs from other methods in that the instruction is always in the context of literature rather than in separate lessons, and the skills to be taught are identified opportunistically rather than systematically. The need for word recognition and language comprehension means that readers who struggle to recognise words accurately will also struggle to understand what they read. Good readers are strong in both word reading and language comprehension. Good language comprehension cannot compensate for poor word reading. [footnote 8] According to 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment ( PISA) data, at age 15 in England there is a gap equivalent to 8.5 years of schooling between the highest and lowest achieving 10% of readers. [footnote 28]The level of reading achievement of struggling readers suggests they will have difficulty with more complex texts that require specific subject knowledge. [footnote 29] Methodology overview

All the schools recognised the importance of secure phonic knowledge and accurate decoding. They used a phonics programme for struggling readers who had gaps in their phonic knowledge. As one reading support teacher said, ‘The weakest readers always struggle with phonics.’ Each of the ten little books introduces only 3-4 new letters at a time and builds words with large text and vibrant, colorful images. These are similar to the A Beka Readers, in that they progress slowly and steadily, but they begin with only one vowel (Aa), and add more vowels as they are progressively comfortable for the child. My son, a struggling and impatient reader, has been gaining confidence with these little readers, and I hope they benefit your child as well!! Many pupils said that reading had previously caused them stress and anxiety. This was often when pupils were asked to read aloud in class. One Year 7 pupil said, ‘It was really embarrassing because I didn’t know how to say some of the words.’ Another Year 7 pupil in the same school said: Many children love graphic novels or comics. These are great for developing imagination. Children also learn how stories are presented in different ways and understand how pictures and text work together. There’s also quite a bit of reading between the lines needed hereJ Jerrim and N Shure, ‘Achievement of 15-year-olds in England: PISA 2015 further analysis report research brief’, Department for Education, 2016. ↩ Read signs and information boards as you are out and about. These often contain new vocabulary to discuss. Recipes or instructions for craft projects are also great for this and also encourage us to read with accuracy The illustrations in Primary Phonics are very simple, and the readers progressively learns their vowel sounds. These Storybooks Starter Set 1 are the perfect introduction to phonics-based early reading. The books contain decodable stories, so they have an added comprehension element while the inside covers clearly list phonetic concepts and sight words included in each book. Pupils described how help with reading was improving their confidence and motivation to read. For instance, one Year 7 pupil said that a strategy to ‘break down syllables’ they were practising in reading classes helped ‘boost my confidence to speak fluently in class’. This pupil therefore wanted to read more in class.