Floppy's Phonics Non-fiction allow children to practise their decoding and literacy skills in the context of exciting non-fiction books, which include a variety of text types and topics, and support from Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy. Books contain inside cover notes to support children in their reading. Help with childrens reading development is also available at www.oxfordowl.co.uk. There are 6 Floppy's Phonics Non-fiction titles available at Level 6: Grow a Pumpkin: This book tells you how to grow a pumpkin - and what to do with it when you have grown it! Visit Paris! Is Paris a good place to visit? Read about one family's trip to Paris, and make up your own mind! All About Robin Hood: Was Robin Hood a real person, or was he just a legend? The Ragged School: Find out about school life long ago. look out - the teachers were very strict! Olympic Dreams: Find out about the Olympics - a fantastic festival of sport! Giant Animals: Find out about the world's biggest animals - from giant spiders and moths to elephants and whales!

 

This book features in the following series: Floppy's Phonics Non Fiction, Oxford Reading Tree .

This book is aimed at children in primary school. This book is part of a reading scheme, meaning that it is a book aimed at children who are learning to read. This reading book uses the Synthetic phonics method. (This can also be referred to as 'blended phonics' or 'inductive phonics'). A phonics approach concentrates on teaching children how to map between sounds and spellings, allowing them to decode written words into their constituent sounds. Phonics skill thus involves being able to split the written word 'cat' into the phonemes /k/, /a/, /t/, and to map from letter 'c' to phoneme /k/, from letter 'a' to phoneme /ae/ and from letter 't' to phoneme /t/. Decoding skill is useful when reading unfamiliar words which use regular spelling sequences. In Synthetic Phonics, children are taught to sound and blend from the start of reading tuition. Children are taught a small group of letter sounds and then shown how these can be co-articulated to pronounce unfamiliar words. Other groups of letters are then taught and the children blend them in order to pronounce new words. The pronunciation of the word is discovered through sounding and blending, and spelling by mapping sounds to letters. Consonant blends that cannot be read by blending are explicitly taught.

There are 24 pages in this book. This book was published 2011 by Oxford University Press .

Alex Brychta collaborated with Roderick Hunt on a series of children books for the Oxford Reading Tree which had an animated spin-off, The Magic Key series. In addition to Oxford Reading Tree, Brychta is also the illustrator of Read with Biff, Chip and Kipper (formerly Read at Home), the Wolf Hill series of books and the Time Chronicles series. He has also written and illustrated several children's books for J M Dent, Franklin Watts, and Oxford University Press. Roderick and Alex won the prestigious Outstanding Achievement Award at the Education Resources Awards 2009. Alex was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to children's literature. He now lives in Surrey with wife Dina whom he has two children with, Kelly Brychta and Dylan Brychta. Monica Hughes is the author of "A Handful of Seeds" and the Isis""trilogy. Frances Ripley is a children's author who specializes in books on transportation and construction vehicles. Thelma Page, an ex-teacher, has extensive experience and knowledge of using Oxford Reading Tree and has written many teaching guides for the series. Claire Llewellyn lives in Hertford and is an established non-fiction author for children. Roderick Hunt started out as a teacher, but began writing for children in 1970. He collaborated with Alex Brychta on a series of children books for the Oxford Reading Tree which had an animated spin-off, The Magic Key series. Roderick and Alex won the prestigious Outstanding Achievement Award at the Education Resources Awards 2009. Now he says, "On my income tax form I put down my profession as storyteller. It never fails to raise an eyebrow. " He lives in London.