What can you expect?

We teach with Little Learners Love Literacy® – a structured and explicit program with engaging multisensory activities. It is carefully sequenced in seven stages to teach children the 44 sounds of the English language and the principles of the alphabetic code (that each speech sound can be represented by different groups of letters, such as the sound /ī/ as in I, sky, pie, ice, cycle, and that a letter (or group of letters) can represent different sounds, such as the letter ‘y’ in yes, gym, funny, sky.

Meet Milo and friends

In the beginning of the school year, we will be learning our Stage 1 letters and sounds. We will be enjoying the Milo’s Birthday Surprise storybook, meeting a new character and sound regularly. We will also learn to blend sounds to say words with the Ally alligator puppet and segment them for spelling, as well as learning handwriting.

Little Learners Love Literacy® is structured in seven stages. In stages 1-4, children learn ‘the simple code’ - the sounds of the alphabet, reading and spelling consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words.

We are learning to read and say these sounds⬆

Stage 1 Decodable Poems

Stage 1 Decodable Texts for HL Books.pdf

Decodable books

Once we finish teaching Stage 1 at the end of Term 1, we will start to send home Pip and Tim decodable books. These are our secret to success – our ‘no tricks’ books. Each story practises the sounds and letters that we have taught, so children will be able to read the books themselves by sounding out and blending (and no guessing!).

What are decodable books?

Decodable books are books that are ‘phonetically controlled’ to contain the letter–sound correspondences that the reader has been explicitly taught. Children use their knowledge of graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) to decode the words in the text independently – with no guessing!

What are Heart ❤️ words?

Heart Words Flashcards

In the Little Learners decodable books, there are a few high-frequency words that children cannot decode yet. We call these ‘Heart 🩷 words’ because children need to learn them by heart to read them. Many Heart words become decodable later in the program when children have more knowledge of the alphabetic code. A few Heart words will not become decodable – they are irregular or use uncommon phoneme–grapheme correspondences.

Stages 1 and 2: my, My, the, The, I.

These are high-frequency words that children need to learn by heart to read automatically in the decodable books. However, you can point out the parts of the word they may already know, for example the /m/ in my and My. The important part of the word the is teaching the articulation of /th/ – where the tongue pokes out between teeth. We include Heart words with and without capitals for the earlier stages, to help children become familiar with how the words look.

How can you support your child at home?

Reading to your child

Read many books to your child and talk about what you just read. This is crucial for vocabulary and linguistic comprehension. Choosing a quiet time, such as bedtime, can help build an easy and fun reading routine.

Say the sounds

Say the ‘pure’ sounds without an ‘uh’ sound on the end; for example, ‘lllll’ rather than ‘luh’. You can listen to the sounds on the Little Learners Love Literacy® YouTube channel.

Practise decoding

When our decodable storybooks start to come home later in the term, encourage your child to sound out to read unknown words. Remember that this is the beginning of your child’s learning to read journey and, just as when they were learning to walk, your child will need support to build confidence reading.