Fitzroy Readers Books 31 to 40 [iPhone]

The Fitzroy Readers is a set of graded books which employ the Fitzroy Method - a phonic approach to reading developed over the last 3 decades.

Readers 31-40 introduce the long vowel sounds (e.g. a-e as in cake). This single feature enables children to decode a very large set of new words.

Here the first long vowel digraph is taught. Until this point, all words that contained them were learned as special words.

Words are chosen to reinforce both old and new spelling patterns. Screwdriver, for instance, contains the new sound for Reader 37, ew, as well as er which was first learnt in Reader 14. This repetition helps long term retention.

The long vowel digraphs are reinforced by a careful choice of vocab: e.g. Kate, cake & rake.

And there is a new facility in the program - what we call hints. As words get longer, we can often help the student by indicating that part of a word is itself a word. For example, if the student clicks for help with the word someone, it is shown as some and one - the parts highlighted in turn.

Another service provided by hints is to indicate where a silent letter occurs. For example, instead of leaving the word friend as a special word with no clues, we indicate in grey that the letter i is silent, then sound out the rest of word as a simple sounding word!

This brings a lot more vocabulary into the software series. As in the lower levels, there is the reading of the pages in a human voice, and the sounding out of words clicked on by the student.

There are several sounding-out options available. All speech is high-quality recording. The interface is designed for young fingers and can be used by the student alone or with a tutor.