Sid is sad because his dad is in a pit, but he comes up with a cunning plan to get him out and play a trick on the man that put him there at the same time! This hilarious story about two mammoths is humorously illustrated by Woody Fox.

* Pink/1A - A simple story with a familiar setting.

* Text type: Fiction.

* Focus phonemes: s, a, t, i, p, n, m, d.

* The story map on pages 14-15 helps children recap the important events of the narrative and provide a wealth of speaking and listening opportunities.

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

This book is at the foundation stage (early years) of the key stage system. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covers children from birth to age 5 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 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 2010 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years. Jane Clarke is the talented author of over 80 books for young children, including young fiction series such as Dr. Kitty Cat, Pet Hotel and Dinosaur Cove. Woody Fox is the illustrator of a variety of children's books, including Create Your Own Animal Stories , Don't Ask Alice , Eva's Journey , and A Dr. Spot Casebook: Zak Has ADHD .