We hope you enjoy the following videos of the progress of children learning to read, spell and write.
Video 1 (Lumen) – In the above video, Lumen is 5 years 3 months. She is using ‘No Nonsense Phonics’ and ‘Phonics International’ resources at home to learn how to read in English. She attends a Welsh-medium primary school where formal English instruction only begins in Year 3. In this video she is currently in Year 1. Lumen will sometimes say /th/ for the grapheme dd, and Lumen’s father will just say, ‘In Welsh this is /th/, but what is it in English?’ and she will quickly answer with the sound /d/. Another example is f , which in Welsh is code for the sound /v/, so sometimes she might read ‘from’ as ‘vrom’; Lumen’s father will just say, ‘In English, this is /f/,’ and straight away she corrects herself and says “/f/ /r/ /o/ /m/, ‘from’.” She is aware of both languages and will ask questions like, ‘Is this Welsh or English?’ ‘What sound is this in Welsh/English?’
Video 2 (Lumen) – In the video above, Lumen is 5 years 5 Months. She is using the ‘No Nonsense Phonics Skills’ Pupil Book 4. Having practised at code and word level, Lumen is applying her phonics knowledge and skills to a ‘Mini Story’. As you can see, she stops and asks what a word means if she doesn’t know it.
Video 3 (Lumen) – In the video above, Lumen is 5 years 8 months. This video shows how she can tackle both shorter and longer words and is fearless to ‘have a go’ at any and all of the words.
Video 1 (Hope) – In the video above, Hope is 4 years old and at the earliest stage of her decoding journey.
Video 2 (Hope) – In the above video, still only 4 years old, Hope demonstrates that she is able to self-assess her own code knowledge as well as her ability to read the words. This is the ‘No Nonsense Phonics Skills’ Pupil Book 2.
Video 3 (Hope) – In the above video, Hope is reading this ‘Mini Story’ for the first time. She uses her decoding skills and vocabulary knowledge to read the words in the story. Notice that when Hope sounds out the word ‘most’ with the short vowel sound /o/, she automatically adjusts the word to say “most”. This is the ‘No Nonsense Phonics Skills’ Pupil Book 5.
Video 4 (Hope) – In the above video we can see Hope reading new printed words where the focus code ‘ou’ represents different sounds. Through the challenging word banks, she gets lots of high-quality decoding practice and learns the meanings of new words. This is the ‘No Nonsense Phonics Skills’ Pupil Book 9.
Video 5 (Hope) – In the above video, Hope is 5 years 7 months. This is Hope’s first reading of this text (Oxford Reading Tree) and it demonstrates the point where a child has a comprehensive grasp of the alphabetic code. She is fearless and able to tackle unfamiliar words with some confidence.
Video 6 (Hope) – In the above video, this is Hope’s first reading of Debbie’s ‘Phonics Reading Book 15’ – ‘The Puddle’ and ‘Poppa and Son’:
