Usborne Very First Reading Series

I have been debating the merits of a shiny new series that is due to be published by Usborne this month called 'Very First Reading'.

It is a series of 15 books, based on synthetic phonics, that has been developed to tie in with the Letters and Sounds programme now being used in many primary schools.

In the first seven books, the adult and child take turns to read - the text that the child reads is decodable, based on the sounds they will have learnt. From book 8, the child reads the whole story, with the adult providing help when needed.

On the face of it, this series sounds great - we all know that Usborne publish excellent quality books with lovely illustrations. I do, however, have one or two concerns about the series.

Firstly, the cost - at £4.99 a book, this makes the series unaffordable for many.

Secondly, when children are learning to read, they need a lot of practice at each level, and should only be asked to read text containing sounds they have been taught. There is only one book for each set of sounds, and if these are to be used in a serious way to support reading, parents would have to know exactly which sounds are known, and when to introduce the next book.

Thirdly, I am not convinced that when a young child is having a lovely story read to them, they will be interested in stopping to read their bit (which can be a painfully slow process when at the initial stage of blending).

I would be very interested to hear feedback from anyone using the series once it is published.

If you are interested in learning more about the Very First Reading series, you might like to watch this YouTube video of Peter Usborne - it has some interesting information about how and why children learn to read with phonics, and how decodable books are written:

High Frequency Words & Tricky Words

High Frequency Words (HFWs) are the words that appear most often in printed materials.

Schools used to expect children to learn 45 HFWs by the end of their first year of school. These have now been replaced by a list of 100 most common words that are taught during Reception Year and Year 1:

1	the	21	that	41	not	61	look	81	put
2	and	22	with	42	then	62	don’t	82	could
3	a	23	all	43	were	63	come	83	house
4	to	24	we	44	go	64	will	84	old
5	said	25	can	45	little	65	into	85	too
6	in	26	are	46	as	66	back	86	by
7	he	27	up	47	no	67	from	87	day
8	I	28	had	48	mum	68	children	88	made
9	of	29	my	49	one	69	him	89	time
10	it	30	her	50	them	70	Mr	90	I’m
11	was	31	what	51	do	71	get	91	if
12	you	32	there	52	me	72	just	92	help
13	they	33	out	53	down	73	now	93	Mrs
14	on	34	this	54	dad	74	came	94	called
15	she	35	have	55	big	75	oh	95	here
16	is	36	went	56	when	76	about	96	off
17	for	37	be	57	It’s	77	got	97	asked
18	at	38	like	58	see	78	their	98	saw
19	his	39	some	59	looked	79	people	99	make
20	but	40	so	60	very	80	your	100	an

The problem is that many of these common words have complex spellings, so that children will not be able to read them in the early stages of reading by using their phonic decoding skills learnt, so they have to learn them by heart.

Tricky words
A ‘tricky’ word either contains letters (or letter combinations) that the child has not yet been taught (and will become fully decodable for them later on) or contains an irregular part that does not follow phonic rules (such as ‘here’, does’, ‘one’). Children do have to learn these words, but even with these words, an understanding of letter sounds helps, as it is only part of the word that is irregular.

A lot of words that are said to be 'irregular', or 'not decodable' are in fact perfectly decodable - they just have to be introduced at an appropriate stage. The majority of HFWs do follow decoding rules and can be sounded out once children have knowledge of how the sounds are represented in alternative ways.

Reading schemes such as the Oxford Reading Tree (Biff, Chip and Kipper stories) are written deliberately to include and 'learn' the HFWs. Good decodable reading schemes keep the HFWs to an absolute minimum in the early stages, giving children a chance to practise their blending skills using the sounds they have been taught.

If your child is following a good synthetic phonics programme, you will be very pleased to hear that they should not be bringing home lists of random, complex words that need to be learned by memory – a nightmare for both children and their parents! This is because phonic skills are established with regular words before trickier words are introduced slowly and systematically. These skills allow them to READ any word they come across (and understand it if it is in their spoken vocabulary).

“Of course English is not a simple phonetic

language, it’s very complex – that’s the problem –

but it does have a code. It has to be taught step by

step, gradually adding the irregularities. English has

a million words and you can’t teach them all one by

one” (Ruth Miskin).