This book selection develops reading and listening skills. Aligned with Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds, they are great for introducing children to reading and laying all-important foundations for phonics work. Phase 1 aims to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. These 24 books are taken from reading schemes and written specifically to aid phonic learning. For example the inside cover notes for books in the Floppy’s Phonics series encourages children to be ‘sound detectives.’ Each page features questions about noises Children might hear in the scene – like music and chatter or sausages sizzling – and encourages children to make their own sounds, rhymes and chants. All books elicit discussion about characters and storylines to nurture visual literacy. Series in this collection include Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds and Oxford’s: Decode and Develop, Explore, and Floppy’s Phonics Letters and Sounds. All books are fitted with a protective jacket to preserve their school life.

Reasons to Love:

• A range of fiction and non-fiction books

• Books chosen from different reading schemes to give children a wider experience of books within each book band

• Books chosen have ideas for sharing and how the parent can support reading, including before and after reading

• The books are colourful and engaging and lend themselves to book talk from the illustrations and the text

• Picture books without words are included for the child’s very first reading experiences, where they tell stories and locate information from the illustrations