Puff the pup is digging a hole and finding lots of interesting things. But what does he find right at the bottom of the hole, and what is hidden inside it? This energetic story by Tony Mitton is illustrated by James Cottell.

* Red A/Band 2A books offer predictable text with familiar objects and actions, combined with simple story development.

* Text type: A simple story with a familiar setting

* Children can recap the stages of the story in the flow chart on pages 14-15.

* Ideas for guided reading at the back of the book provide practical support and stimulating activities.

* This book has been quizzed for Accelerated Reader.

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

This book is at the following key stages: Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 . 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. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covers children from birth to age 5 years. KS1 covers school years 1 and 2, and ages 5-7 years. This book is at national curriculum levels Early Years, Stepping Stones . The National Curriculum sets out the programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects at all 4 key stages. Early years refers to the standards that school and childcare providers must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5. Stepping Stones relates to development in Reception. 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 scheme has multiple levels. 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 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Tony Mitton is an award-winning poet, and author of Wayland and The Storyteller's Secrets. Potter's Boy is his first prose novel. Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years.