Yes, if you are ordering for a US school or district, or if you would like to speak to a K12 sales representative about which Phonic Books will best suit your needs, please contact K12education@penguinrandomhouse.com.

Please fill out this form indicating your wish list of titles and email it to K12education@penguinrandomhouse.com.

You should have received an email with your tracking details
following the placement of your order. If not, please get in touch with sales@phonicbooks.com with your order number and we will get back to you.

Yes, please email k12education@penguinrandomhouse.com and they will be able to advise on your request.

Please email sales@phonicbooks.com with your order number and we will get back to you.

Please email sales@phonicbooks.com and we will send you instructions.

No, we don’t exchange goods, but you can return your order if it is in resaleable/brand-new condition.

Yes, we can change the delivery address as long as the order has not yet been dispatched. Please email sales@phonicbooks.com with your order number for assistance.

No, this offering is not available. For books that are part of a
pack, the entire pack would have to be re-purchased in order to obtain
the lost title.

Ebooks are available for a selection of Phonic Book titles on Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Hoopla, O’Reilly, Mackin, Actively Learn, ebooks.com, Baker & Taylor, OverDrive, Bibliotheca and Vitalsource.

Written languages are codes of symbols which represent spoken language. In the English Phonic Code, the symbols (letters) represent units of single sounds.

Teaching reading with phonics unlocks the code to beginner readers. Teaching reading without phonics is like teaching children a secret code without the key to decode it. Some children are natural code-breakers but many are not.

Blending is pushing the sounds together into a word, for example, ‘c’ ‘a’ ‘t’ – ‘cat’.This is an underlying skill for reading.

Segmenting is isolating the sounds in a word, for example, ‘c’ ‘a’ ‘t’ are the sounds in the word ‘cat’. This is an underlying skill for reading and spelling.

Decodable books have texts which the pupil can read using the phonics they have already been taught. The text is controlled to enable the reader to read independently at every stage. All Phonic Books titles are decodable.

Decodable books help children to:

• Practice and apply letter-sound relationship knowledge taught to date through a meaningful, continuous text
• Build fluency and reading stamina
• Build comprehension
• Build confidence and enjoyment in reading

Decoable books develop reliable and successful strategies for tackling new words, blending sounds into words rather than trying to guess the words and builds the reader’s confidence.

In general, our books can be used with any structured literacy program. Every program introduces the sounds in a slightly different order, our books follow the Sounds-Write Reading and Spelling program. Each of our books lists what the student needs to know before reading.

If the order of the introduction of sounds is different, delay the reading by a few weeks until the student has covered the sounds. To check the phonic progression, see our Phonic Progression Chart.

You can see how our books align with popular US curricula including UFLI, Heggerty and more here.

The target phoneme and the decodable book must match up, so that children are never caught out and can always sound out and blend the words in the book. You can find use the diagnostic assessment in our instructional manuals to match your student with a Phonic Books series.

Get in touch with us at K12education@penguinrandomhouse.com for guidance, or review the Phonic Books scope and sequence here.

You can find diagnostic assessments for older readers in our instructional manual for catch-up readers. You can also find reading assessments here which will match your student with an appropriate series.

We recommend buying the activity books which offer a mixture of blending, segmenting, reading, spelling, comprehension tasks, and much more. These activity books are linked to the reading books and help reinforce learning.

Yes, the carefully planned phonic structure of the books fully supports a phonics-first approach to reading. The books can be used for individual or group reading.

This depends on how your school is going to use the books. In order
to work out the optimum number, you will need to decide the following:

1. Are they for whole class use or group use?
2. For group use: How many students in a group? Six? Eight?
3. Are the books to be used for intervention? How many sets does this setting require?
4. Does the school plan to prepare book bags? If so, you will need a copy for each child.
5. Are classes sharing the books?

*Note that only one activity book per instructor is necessary, as these are photocopiable.

Dandelion Launchers and Dandelion World are for beginner readers or young readers who need lots of practice at the early stages of reading. For this reason there is just one line of text on each page. Dandelion Launchers is a fiction book set and Dandelion World is a nonfiction book set.

Dandelion Readers can be used as additional reading material for young readers or for younger catch-up readers. Dandelion Readers range progresses at a faster pace than Dandelion Launchers and Dandelion World range. From Unit 3, there is more text on each page – two or more lines. As the phonic progression and level (unit) structure is the same, you can use both series together by splitting them up according to units.

Yes, Dandelion World is a series of nonfiction decodable books. Each book has a knowledge builder to develop vocabulary and world knowledge about the specialist subject.

The photocopiable activity books complement the decodable books. They contain photocopiable activities for students who need further practice in blending,segmenting, spelling, and reading comprehension. Some activities should be introduced before reading the books and others, such as comprehension, should be introduced after reading the books.

A short explanation on each page explains when and how to introduce the activity.

You can refer to this chart to establish the progression of our books.

Dandelion Launchers and Dandelion World are suitable for children beginning to learn how to read. They should be used in kindergarten.

Dandelion Readers are suitable for grades 1 and 2, depending on the progress of the student.

All of our Hi-Lo decodables are suitable for older, striving readers ages 8–14+.

While learning to read, children soon encounter common words used to
construct simple sentences. Some are decodable; other common words have
complex spellings which the child may not be able to decode at this
early stage of reading. These words are referred to as “phonically-irregular high frequency words” or “heart words” and are introduced gradually into the texts.

Written languages are codes of symbols which represent spoken language.
In some scripts, the symbols may represent parts of the word. In the English Phonic Code, the symbols (letters) represent units of single sounds.

Teaching reading with phonics unlocks the code to beginner readers. Teaching reading without phonics is like teaching children a secret code without the key to decode it. Some children are natural code-breakers, but many are not.

Synthetic phonics differs from traditional phonics. In the past children were taught to break up words like ‘cat’ into ‘c’ and ‘at’. The word would be taught as part of the ‘at’ word list.

Synthetic phonics teaches children to identify each sound in the word separatelyand then blend or ‘synthesize’ the sounds together into a word. Children are taught to blend and segment each sound in the word.

The English Phonic Code is complex. Beginner readers start with the simple part: the Initial Phonic Code. This includes the sounds of the alphabet within CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant), adjacent consonants in 4 and 5 sound words (e.g. ‘land’, ‘from’, ‘blend’) and the consonant digraphs (ch, sh, th, ck, ng and qu). The Initial Phonic Code is taught in Units 1-15 in the Dandelion Launchers and Dandelion World series and in Units 1-20 in the Dandelion Readers Series.

The Extended Phonic Code includes the vowel and consonant sounds which are represented by alternative spellings. E.g.: ai, ay, a, ea, a-e etc. all spell the sound 'ae’. In our books, the Extended Phonic Code is taught in Levels 1, 2, 3 & 4 and the Split Vowel Spelling Books in the Dandelion Readers Series and for older readers in the Alba, Totem, Rescue, Titan, Talisman 1 & Talisman 2 Series.