Children start the 1,2,3 and Away! Series after a relatively short kick start of phonics: at around the end of the SSP Purple Code Level (Letters and Sounds Phase 3) they understand the concept of speech sounds being represented in print with graphemes (we call them 'Sound Pics') They continue with the explicit phonics instruction and matched decodable readers, but these 'transition' readers' bridge the orthographic knowledge gap so many children face, and that prevents them from reading independently for pleasure. They start exploring the whole spelling code - not just the GPCs taught in their phonics program - and experience phonological recoding under guidance and within meaningful context.

These TWO pathways - explicit phonics instruction of a set of 100 or so grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences AND exploration of words they would never be able to 'sound out' with those taught GPCs, within a book series that gets children excited about the 1,2,3 and Away! characters. Before you know it the children are hooked as they love The Story People! Most love being able to use the 'Code Cracking' sheets to figure out the mapping of unfamiliar correspondences as they do not have to rely on guessing at the words or asking for help.

The new interactive library launches in December. Children can read over 120 books and click on words they aren't sure of, to hear the phonemes, see the graphemes (her unique Code Mapping tool is utilised) and hear the word. They can also click at the end of each page to hear Miss Emma read the whole page. It is a totally different approach, that promotes independence and centres around reading independently for pleasure.