This story, about Dad's new musical hobby, is part of the "Wrens" level of story books at stage 3 of the "Oxford Reading Tree". It is designed for children needing help to progress to stage 4 and consolidates words from Stage 3 Wrens, in patterned sentence constructions. Other stories in the "Wrens" series of storybooks at Stage 3 include: role reversals of a knight; a princess and a dragon; a community help project to improve the environment; a strange creature which turns up in the park; Mrs May in great distress (but don't worry, there's a happy ending); and Mum and Dad experiencing the ups and downs of shopping together.

 

This book features in the following series: More Wrens, Oxford Reading Tree .

This book is suitable for Key Stage 1. KS1 covers school years 1 and 2, and ages 5-7 years. A key stage is any of the fixed stages into which the national curriculum is divided, each having its own prescribed course of study. At the end of each stage, pupils are required to complete standard assessment tasks. This book is at level 1c of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum sets out the programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects at all 4 key stages. Each National Curriculum level is divided into sub-levels, where Level C means that a child is working at the lower end of the level, Level B they is working comfortably at that level, and Level A means that they is working at the top end of the level. The Government has suggested a child should achieve the following levels by the end of each school year: (i) Level 1b by end Year 1, Level 2a-c by end Year 2, Level 2a-3b by end Year 3, Level 3 by the end Year 4, Level 3b-4c by the end Year 5, Level 4 by the end Year 6. 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 16 pages in this book. This book was published 1996 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. 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.