First Class Phonics: The Complete Course

First Class Phonics is a series of books designed to help children quickly become proficient readers and writers by using Synthetic Phonics, a high-quality teaching method recognised all over the world. In Synthetic Phonics, children focus on the skills that enable them to read and spell words accurately. It is essential that children develop the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds in order to read fluently. The eight books in the series provide a complete reading programme in which children are taught to recognise the importance of every sound they hear in the spoken word and learn to blend these sounds so that they can read words from the very beginning of the program. Children progress from blending simple single sounds in Book One to using digraphs (two letter sounds) and trigraphs (three letter sounds) in later books. In the earlier books children are taught one letter or letter group for each sound but are gradually introduced to different groups of letters that make the same sound as well as the different sounds that can be made from an identical group of letters. Children are also taught words that they cannot initially ‘sound out’ as ‘tricky words’ that are learnt by sight. As children learn the different sounds that a group of letters can make these words cease to be ‘tricky words’. With lots of fun activities to reinforce learning in each book and a complete story in which children practice the skills they have learnt children quickly become fluent readers with a love for books.