Description
The book series ‘Essential Steps to Literacy’ offers a systematic, synthetic phonics programme over 8 books covering roughly three years. The books are designed according to the latest pedagogical research, to help learners to both read and write simultaneously in English. Competency builds easily as learning is incremental with earlier concepts constantly being reviewed. Graphemes are introduced in order of frequency of use, enabling children to read and write from the first day using the most commonly used words. The scope and sequence at the beginning of each book indicates the clear progressive steps.
The books are written with ESL children in mind and have references to those whose first language is Arabic, but are ideal for any KG or Grade 1 beginners, older children who are late starters to English literacy learning or for intervention. Books 1-3 cover around 55 graphemes, facilitating the reading and writing of over 800 words.
Book 1 takes children from being non-readers and writers to being able to read and write over 350 single syllable words accurately and fluently. It covers all initial phoneme-grapheme correspondences for the alphabetic letters plus some consonant digraphs and the -s suffix. It also includes some high frequency words to be learnt by sight, to facilitate reading comprehension and confidence in writing. It is designed to be covered in a semester of 12 weeks but may take a longer or shorter time depending upon the students; mastery is more important than speed.
Instruction is given on correct letter formation, plus indication of the starting and end points of writing each letter to ensure that good habits are established from the beginning. This facilitates fluency in writing. Writing lines are provided to encourage consistency of letter size. Children learn to read and then write what they have read, as this helps memory retention of the correspondence between language sounds and letters. The physical process of writing further reinforces learning.
A review section is also provided with each lesson to keep track of learning to date.
Teacher notes are provided for every lesson with additional interesting snippets of information and advice on best practice. The books are attractive to children, being in full colour, with engaging texts and easy to follow instructions. There is also a Certificate of Completion at the end of each book.
It is important to start on Book 1 as each book builds upon the learning in the previous on
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