Kit and Process
The Reading Revival toolkit is designed to include everything you need to assess whether your child is ready to learn to read, and to potentially bring them to a level of reading fluency of approximately that of a 7 year old within a few weeks. The toolkit contents and process are as follows:
Instruction booklet
This is a short guidebook for adults, and is packed with handy hints on how to achieve complete success with the help of the toolkit. It describes the process in detail, providing further information on embedding reading skills during the course of the reading scheme and beyond, so that the process is fascinating, pleasurable, and ultimately very productive for both adult and child.
Shape and word cards
There are three sets of shapes and one set of words included in the shape and word card pack. This is the first stage of the road to reading and the cards are used before reading begins. If a child can recognise and match shapes, they are ready to recognise and match words, as this is the fundamental skill required when reading. The adult uses the cards in a matching game, working through the shape sets that get subtly more difficult as the child learns to identify more complicated corresponding shapes. The 12 word cards are then introduced and the child learns to memorise what the words say. These words comprise the full text of the first book.
12 reading books
Years of research and practice have been distilled into these reading books, so that when the scheme is completed, the child will have developed a positive, confident attitude towards reading, and will also have a valuable vocabulary of words that will provide the grounding for ongoing reading success with minimal further assistance.
To this end, these reading books have been carefully created to gradually present new words at an acceptable level to the child, whilst crucially ensuring that the words already learned are often revisited and practised. The words in the scheme have been meticulously chosen; some because they are words that children habitually find easy to learn, and others because the words occur often in language. This blend has been tested with many children over the years and has been found to deliver an accelerated level of learning. Adults may find the content of the reading books stilted, but the content is vital to the child’s success, and it does not detract in any way from the child’s enjoyment of the books.
Our research has also indicated that most young children prefer a reading scheme of books that contain a variety of different stories, rather than one series about the same subjects. These books are written with the child’s amusement in mind, and the stories have proved tremendously popular.
12 Stickers
Just as the cards and books are intended to introduce a positive, light hearted approach into the learning process, the stickers are included to mark the achievements of the child along the road to reading, and provide constant opportunities to praise and celebrate the milestones when finishing each book. Children almost without exception appreciate stickers, and as the child is awarded one when they have read a book, it is an important opportunity to remind the child of how well they are progressing, perhaps looking back over the books in the scheme already read, and fixing the stickers to the carry case containing the toolkit as powerfully visual ways to track progress.
For information on what's contained in the Reading Revival Toolkit for Teachers, click here