An A4 grade-specific Core Reader that includes:

• Daily activities for 8 weeks of every term

• Colour coded page labels that indicate the week and day of the week

• End-of-term revision tables that list all phonics and high frequency words covered

• Scaffolded activities designed to develop:

  • phoneme-grapheme recognition;

  • blending and segment skills;

  • orthographic mapping (retention and quick recall of words);

  • reading of long and difficult words;

  • word building;

  • morphological awareness;

  • reading fluency;

  • written comprehension skills – lower order questions;

  • oral comprehension skills – higher order questions.

From the start of Grade 1 to the middle of Grade 2, our Core Readers are intentionally designed to exclude images in order to focus on the development of decoding and encoding skills. The books are structured to follow simple daily routines and to repeat the same set of activities per day. This allows learners to quickly internalise the requirements of each activity, so that they can focus on the content. It also ensures that learners are soon able to complete activities independently or in pairs.

From the middle of Grade 2 to the end of Grade 3, the reinforcement of decoding and encoding skills continues, but greater emphasis is placed on reading fluency and comprehension.

The Core Readers are referenced in the Teaching Plans as part of the Shared Reading and Group Guided Reading lessons. During Shared Reading lessons, the teacher explicitly models the activities and the reading skills. During Group Guided Reading, learners complete the daily activities before moving on to read a Levelled Reader.