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As seen in the UK, where phonics teaching and testing has been mandatory for over a decade, at least 25% of children do not reach the 'self-teaching' phase, after 2 years of systematic synthetic phonics instruction. Book a session with Miss Emma, the Neurodivergent Learning Whisperer. Visible English Spelling Code is the perfect bridge to self-teaching.
Start these from the Yellow Code Level, as the children are confidently mapping phonemes to graphemes - and understand what 'decoding' and 'encoding' entails. They have strategies! So even if they 'deduce' a word - eg 'caterpillar' they know to 'track back' and use Duck Hands, Lines and Numbers, choose the Speech Sound Monsters, and then look at the word and figure out where the word is segmented.
We are encouraging / facilitating deeper orthographic awareness.
They do this ALONGSIDE still reading (phonics) Code Level readers, which are aligned with the explicit, systematic phonics instruction. Green - Purple - Yellow- Blue
Most should be off the decodable readers before grade 1
If children don't know the Sound Pics (graphemes) they can deduce the word or ask someone what it is - and map it! They start the One, Two, Three and Away! series when they are working at the SSP Yellow Code Level. We have Code Mapped and Monster Mapped the first Village with Three Corners books for you!
Use in the ICRWY Lessons app for US$5.50 per month (2 devices) or ask to to be given access for 200 devices if you have SSP for PCs
Start these Village with Three Corners readers in term 2 of Prep - children can use the Monstered options if not yet working confidently at the Yellow Code Level.
Spend 5 minutes after playtime/ lunch - independent reading.
Read them as part of your SSP for PC subscription or within the ICRWY Lessons app!
They are a great way to expose children to skills they will not develop within decodeable readers because the graphemes are restricted
eg they may see words like 'pug' pʌɡ but not many words like 'put' (other than as an 'exception' word) - because the u in 'put' maps with ʊ (pʊt)
It's important that we take care of those bridging processes! Far too many children (at least 1 in 4) will not become skilled readers if only decodable readers are used in Prep and Year 1, for independent reading (see UK data). Shifting beliefs about comprehension leading on (sequentially) from decoding fluency (especially if the text being decoded is restricted to a relatively small number of grapheme to phoneme correspondences) could shift classroom practices. If not, parents can introduce these at home. Use the ICRWY Lessons app.
