Print or email our letter to help parents or caregivers guide children through their literacy journey.
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News & Information
One thing that all teachers agree on is how important it is to get children reading
This is a testimonial by Ann Sullivan. Ann has over 30 years’ experience in mainstream and specialist education. Based in the UK, her career includes roles as a KS1 and KS2 class teacher, SEN secondary literacy teacher, school-based Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO), an advisory teacher for pupils with special educational needs and a Specialist…
Read MoreHow to…teach alternative spellings for vowel and consonant sounds
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** One of the difficult aspects of the English Alphabetic Code is that sounds (phonemes) can be spelled in different ways. For example, the sound /ae/ can be spelled ‘ai’…
Read MoreHow to…teach heart words
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Heart words is another term for common words with tricky spellings, or high-frequency words with “irregular” spellings. The term “irregular” is a bit misleading because while beginner readers might…
Read MoreHow to…write a word chain
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** First, what is a word chain? A word chain is a list of words used to develop phonemic awareness skills: blending, segmenting, and phoneme manipulation. These are the underlying…
Read MoreHow to…teach vocabulary when reading a decodable book
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Decodable books often include target words that students may not know. There are many reasons why students may not know words in a text: The word may be unusual.…
Read MoreHow to…dictate a sentence from a decodable book
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Dictation is a great way to consolidate the bonds between reading and spelling. It is a controlled exercise where students can succeed because the teacher includes words with spellings…
Read MoreHow to…correct reading errors
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** One of the most important elements of learning is receiving error feedback (How We Learn, Dahaene). With every error feedback, the student can adjust their knowledge or skill and…
Read MoreHow to…stop students from guessing
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Many students will have been encouraged to use guessing strategies by well-meaning teachers and tutors, such as guessing clues from the picture or the context, and/or skipping the word…
Read MoreHow to…read a nonfiction decodable book
In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Nonfiction decodable books are wonderful reading resources. They combine two essential parts of reading: word recognition (decoding) and world knowledge (language comprehension and subject vocabulary). Educators now recognize that…
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