Building blocks of literacy

Tower of building blocks

We all want our children to find learning to read exciting and enjoyable, but what happens when they get stuck? Should we be quick to help, or wait and let them figure it out themselves? With the help of a set of building blocks, literacy specialist, Savannah Campbell, explains how we can encourage productive struggling.…

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Phonic Books stand out from your average decodable

Dandelion Launchers - Decodable Books

At Phonic Books, we know the importance of continuous and lifelong learning. We’re always delighted to hear from our customers, and feedback on our decodable books is especially welcome. Your comments help us to understand what we are doing right – as well as flagging up anything that could be improved. In this testimonial, Dyslexia…

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Reflections on Emily Hanford’s, “Sold a Story”

Image of Sold a Story Podcast

  Emily Hanford’s thought-provoking podcast, “Sold a Story” has created quite a buzz in the education community. Reading specialist and SLP, Miriam Fein, has been listening:   “It didn’t seem like they were teaching them to read. It seemed like they were teaching them to sound like they could read”.  (A parent, in “Sold a…

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Organizing decodable books

Trays containing decodable books

What’s the best way to organize your decodables? There are many different ways to go about this. Here, K-5 reading specialist, Savannah Campbell, shares some helpful tips and tricks to make your classroom library user friendly.   Now that you have decodables, how do you organize them? I’m lucky to live in a district that…

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Consonant Blends (Adjacent Consonants) – Speaking and Spelling

Using tiddly frogs for segmenting activity

Systematic Phonics programs now talk of  ‘consonant blends’ or ‘adjacent consonants’, but what are they? Why is it that the letters ‘bl’ in the word ‘black’ are adjacent consonants while ‘ck’ are not? Speech and language therapist, Hema Desai explains the difference and suggests fun, multisensory activities to embed learning. As a speech and language…

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Moon Dogs Extras – An Independent Review

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…

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Summer reading doesn’t have to be a struggle – simple tips to stop the slide!

Our kids are out for summer, and now all learning rests squarely on the parents’ shoulders. I know that it can be daunting. You want to make sure your child doesn’t lose any of the skills they’ve learned, but you aren’t always sure of the best way to help during the summer. So today, I…

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Lynbrook School District: A Successful First Year!

In the latest blog post in this series, Guest blogger, Faith Borkowsky discusses her observations and recommendations for any school district considering the transition to a Science of Reading based instruction practice.  The importance of choosing a science-based reading program that is coupled with high quality, carefully aligned decodable books and resources and backed with…

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Part 4: Hollywood Here We Come! From documentary teaser release to the beginning of editing – The Truth About Reading

In Part 4 of this series of guest blogs by Nora Chahbazi, literacy consultant (pro bono) via the John Corcoran foundation to The Truth About Reading documentary team and Founder of EBLI, talks about the the excitement surrounding the release of the documentary teaser. On September 22, 2021, the teaser for The Truth About Reading documentary was premiered at a…

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Bridging phonics and phonemic awareness to build proficient readers

Phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge are the biggest indicators of how well a child will learn to read in the first two years of school. Yet phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge are NOT the end goal. Our end goal will always be proficient readers. To reach that end, we must work to instruct children on…

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