Review:Reading for Success Books 1-4 published by Prim-Ed
The Reading for Success Books have been written based on latest research and designed to help teachers direct lessons and independent pupil activities in five areas of reading.
The research that the authors use is focussed on teaching reading by phonemic awareness, vocabulary, phonics, comprehension and fluency. The four books in this series are broken up into these five sections of reading pedagogy. A definition of the element of reading is given along with many ways for the teacher to implement the element into their teaching.
There are plenty teacher-directed activities, games and pupil-activity sheets throughout the four books.
These books are suitable for ages 4-7 and have been constructed around the Infant curricuum though the teacher could absolutely use these for First Class and within a Support setting for any age.
What I like about these books is the clarity and ease they provided for me to supplement the reading books and approaches I aready use in a meaningful and careful, planned way.
Other aspects I welcomed were the assessment tools for each element of reading that was being taught. Absolutely an essential for the teacher and child’s assessment portfolio. The assessment tests have not been simply pulled out of the air, they are taken or adapted from carefully constructed researched tests available to educators.
For example, the Phonemic Awareness Assessment test in Book 1 was adapted with permission from the Pre-phonics Tests:Phonemic Awareness and more by Doctor Fry.
In the Fluency section, there are many photocopiable resources such as reading diary records, reading award templates, nursery rhymes with activties and readers’ theatre scripts,
Within the Comprehension section, we have some graphic organisers like story maps, sequencing maps, text webs, stop and predict and story frames.
Book 1 starts with the basics and each book develops the reading element further, making it a very careful and motivating program for any class to follow. I am very impressed with this product and think that every school should have one. I am going to give it the “Star of the Class” award.
The books are available from http://www.prim-ed.com/webshop/Literacy/Phonics/Reading-for-Success and are priced at €29.95 each.
