Find out all about two nocturnal animals - bats and rats. Learn fascinating facts about the similarities and differences of these two animals in this illustrated information book by Karen Romano Young.

*Collins Big Cat Phonics Progress books are specifically designed for struggling readers, giving them age-appropriate texts that they can read, building their confidence and fostering positive attitudes towards reading. This title has a text level of Band 3 / Yellow, which provides varied sentence structure and natural language, and an interest level of Band 10 / White.

*Text type: An information book

*On pages 14 to 15, children can recap the information in the book.

*Curriculum links: Science

This book is part of a book series called Collins Big Cat Phonics Progress .

This book is at interest level(s) Collins Stage 10, Book Band White, Book Band 10. This book is part of a reading scheme, meaning that it is a book aimed at children who are learning to read. This book is part of a HiLo reading scheme, combining high interest relative to the required reading skill. This reading scheme has multiple levels. This book has been specially written for struggling readers. This reading book uses the phonics method. This 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. 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 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years. Karen Romano Young is a science writer and the author of the Smithsonian doodle books Blast Off! and Oceans . Kay Hiatt has held the posts of literacy coordinator, deputy head teacher and head teacher, registered Ofsted inspector and trainer for the EYFS stage.