Short Vowels: 10 Decodable Reading Books and Supporting Activities

This is the first lesson in the Reading Made Simple Learn to Read and Spell Programme for Struggling Readers teaching the short vowel /a/. It can help struggling readers achieve reading fluency - perhaps after several years of failure, even perhaps after having been taught phonics with another programme. The programme follows a course of highly structured, synthetic, systematic phonics instruction.

Science of reading aligned. Based on the most up-to-date phonic research.

This is the first of the 5 vowel packs which should be undertaken in order: a, o, i, u, e.

Objectives:

To help children to develop a core set of decodable words, that they have seen enough times so that they no longer have to sound them out but can recognise them easily and recall them when needed.

One of the biggest problems for struggling readers is that often, phonic reading books do not give the child a chance to see the same words again and again and so some children are forced to sound out nearly every word, which slows their speed of reading right down and means that they often cannot understand what they have read.

Who is the programme for?

This Learn to Read and Spell Programme is for children who have got stuck after learning to sound out CVC words and for whom reading fluency seems elusive.

We gradually introduce blends gradually as usually one word with a blend in the family is included each week.

Order, outlined and steps:

The Reading Made Simple Reading and Spelling programme for struggling readers focuses the child's attention on around ten words containing the same phonic sound, at a time. For struggling readers, these lists are subdivided into two sets of 5 and the lesson is spread over 2 weeks.

During these two weeks, the words are practised in various different ways:

• On flashcards provided

• Sentence building with the flashcards

• Speed reading of just the ten words

• Sentence writing activities

• Fluency charts

• Games

• Reading books which only contain the ten words, plus the true sight words: a, the is in this first pack.

The reading books should be used as a form of assessment and any words which the child needs to sound out ca be practised further, while you move on to the next sound.

Multisensory:

Children who struggle to learn to read often need a multisensory approach. This Learn to Read and Spell programme uses the power of the hand to provide the multisensory dimension so often lacking in many 'learn to read' programmes.

The child not only sounds out the words to read, but also to write.

The words are then put into sentences to read and write, building up as we go into longer text

Confidence building

Because we are working with a discrete set of words, with the same sound, the child soon learns to recognise the words in each lesson, having sounded them out, read them, written them many times in many fun ways.

As the child reads each book, you can watch as s/he finally begins to say, 'I can do this!' as s/he meets familiar words.

What is included:

2 packs of activities and worksheets

2 reading books

2 games

Full teaching instructions,

Directions

There is a simple lesson plan that is the same each week:

On Monday, introduce the new sound and 5 words as directed and teach them as explained. Tuesday to Thursday, rigorously practice the words using the activities in the pack.

On Friday, do a dictation (provided) and read the book for each week.

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