Aware of the fact he will go to school in the UK – feeling guilty because of it – I have introduced basic exercises to learn to read and write the English primary words following the curriculum of key stage1. Basically he will have to be able to recognise about 150 words by the time he joins key stage 1, year 2 in September.

Learning to read and write in Italian is much straighter forward, once you learn the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes next to a vowel you are halfway there. A phonetic method that gives children the tools they need to be able to read every word with a lot of practice. Because of the nature of spelling of English words, where the same sound can have more than one spelling, learning to read requires a more visual approach where visual memory is crucial.  Children learn to recognise the primary words, high-frequency words that make up 50% to 70% of English text, and learn them in stages.

Visual memory is the most used method for young children learning to read, however I have come across some useful books that follow the phonics system. The Crocodile Ride by Jillian Harker is one of these books; it is part of a series called First Reading Fun. There are three stories in this particular book written in rhyme that feature three vowel sounds: long i as in sigh and ride, long u as is grew, room, fume, long a as in wait and gate.

For example a sentence from the book reads like this: – He fetched a huge tube, and he blew “toot toot” – the same sound has three different spellings ew, u and oo, so phonics exercises can help but the visual memory element is still necessary.

The book is fun to read with the clever rhymes and the colourful illustrations by Jan Smith. Other books from the same series are Cat’s hat, Goat in a boat and Frog on log. To buy these books click here.