Writing for schools
Come Alive Stories
Six traditional tales, which I retold in verse, set to music by Tim Harding.
Click the covers to read a bit of the story. Click the audio button for a bit of the song.
Click the covers to read a bit of the story. Click the audio button for a bit of the song.
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Other titles in the series:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears The Gingerbread Man Jack and the Beanstalk Little Red Riding Hood “These are a lovely resource and there are great ideas linked to Foundation Stage Stepping Stones … The children loved them and so did I!” Barbara Scorer, Nursery Equipment magazine “The rhythm and rhyme of the story told in poetic form really captured the children’s imagination. The drama, music and movement activities completed the holistic learning and the children loved it.” Deborah Harrison, EYE magazine |
Nasen & TES Awards – Best Inclusive Resource for Primary Classrooms
Practical Preschool Awards – Gold Nursery World Equipment Awards 2006 – Gold ERA Awards 2007 – Finalist |
Ragtag rhymes
I am not a fan of synthetic phonics and feel utterly dismayed at current UK government's insensitive imposition of its systematic phonics regime. But I have to confess to having dabbled in the dark arts – I like to think, as a double agent. Resistance, as it turned out, was useless; my full account of what went wrong and why appears in this published article.
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I can’t recall a time when the squiggles on the page meant nothing. Of
course, I must have learned to read at some time. I do remember
Peter and Jane, and Janet and John, so they must have had something
to do with it. But it seems they did their job with such quiet
efficiency that I never noticed. Nowadays, Janet and John and their
descendants have been ousted by Letters and Sounds.
Quite. Well, whatever we might feel about synthetic phonics, it seems to me there's a bit of a problem with the idea that children must read only words with letter–sound correspondences so-far taught. So what they get is – not books – but ‘captions’. Mind-boggling in their sheer meaninglessness. So when Yellow Door asked me if I might be able to create something to comply with Letters and Sounds that children would actually want to read, I said yes, I thought I might. I’d like to say these books were huge fun to write; actually it was incredibly tough and took a lot, lot longer than you might think. But the fun bit was when I got to work with the illustrator, Andy Roberts – who revealed not only extraordinary skill and imagination, but also seemingly endless reserves of patience as I dithered over the shape of the Dat's nose and the skin tone for the Oddom. So here they are. Not a reading scheme as such, but real picturebooks, with rhyming text and smashing illustrations, that just happen to support the phonic progression in good old Letters and Sounds.
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 "Dr Seuss for the 21st-century – a joyful blend of humour, rhyme and nonsense with real child appeal. It's great to find really good books that make practising and applying phonic knowledge meaningful and fun. If we want children to really enjoy reading while they are learning to read, we need more books like these." Sue Palmer
"A great resource with lots of potential for children's independent application into writing." Christine Barker, Literacy and CLLD Consultant
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