[senco-forum] phonic books secondary to complement Phonographix

There is a real dearth of phonics based readers for secondaries.  I have some very old Skyways readers, some of which are eminently decodable (though strangely, the earliest ones in the series, such as Nick Dick, the Detective, aren't very decodable at all.  As I use Ruth Miskin's Read Write Inc 2, which incorporates a long piece of text in each module, I don't have to worry so much about reading books now.  I suppose it would be possible to buy a set of the modules and use them for reading practice, though how they would fit with the PG progression I'm not quite sure..

I also use, believe it or not, Jelly & Bean as supplemental reading for the very poor students.  They don't seem to mind at all that the stories are written for a much younger age group.  I think they are just deeply thankful to be able to read something successfully.  ( Even the 'streetwise' ones don't seem to mind)

I have also used passages from Shakespeare (usually the scenes of the play that will be 'done' for SATs in Y9) for children who are quite well advanced with their decoding skills.   It is surprisingly decodable and the unfamiliar sentence constructions and use of words makes them pay close attention to the words.  They can't guess their way through Shakespeare.  I also do this because I've sat through many a SAT Shakespeare test in the 'special arrangements' room where the children take one look at the Shakespeare passage and say 'I can't read that, it's a load of rubbish...  In class they get to see 'the video' and learn the gist of the story, but they rarely seem to be required to read the original text themselves.

I hope that publishers soon cotton on to the fact that some older children need decodables, too, and come up with some age appropriate material.

Maggie

Sharon Fawcitt <sfawcitt at dsl.pipex.com> wrote: Our LSAs are putting a couple of pupils through phonographix who were
complete non-readers on arrival, and having fantastic success.   Does anyone
know of a series/scheme of phonic books suitable for streetwise Year 7
pupils  which would complement the programme?  I have done a search through
the archives, but might be using the wrong key words.

Thanks

Sharon

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