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The
Origins of the Fitzroy Readers
The name of our town, Fitzroy, is known to thousands of children
- mostly in schools across Australia, but also in New Zealand,
Taiwan, Singapore and many other countries. This is because
the title Fitzroy Readers is printed across the top of every
copy of seventy children's story books created here in Fitzroy
and published as a series for learning to read. Over this decade, a million
story booklets have been printed.
Back in the early seventies, we, Faye Berryman and Philip O'Carroll,
met and started up Fitzroy Community School in North Fitzroy,
an inner suburb of Melbourne. Many of the houses here are over
a century old, built in the old English style. The school faces
a leafy park, known as the Edinburgh Gardens. Faye had been
a secondary teacher who had seen the sad outcomes for children
who emerged from primary schooling with poor literacy. Philip
had been a philosophy lecturer specialising in logic and linguistics.
Between the two of us, we were determined to come up with a
method of teaching that would ensure that every child could
read well.
The Fitzroy Readers have helped children in over 3000 schools
in Australia, and many children in other countries. Furthermore,
since we published these, school systems across Australia have
gradually re-adopted a phonic element into their reading programmes.
And we sometimes wonder who is reading our stories. And we wonder
how the teachers, children and parents who use the Fitzroy Readers
in so many places far and wide, imagine Fitzroy, the source
of their seventy stories.
The
Whole Language Approach
Giving
children books and encouraging parents to read to their children
is a lovely thing. However, as government policy, to be implemented
as the weapon against Australia's poor literacy standards, it
can only fail. Not only this, but such a government initiative
will lull the general public into the false security that something
practical is being done to remedy the problem.
It
is a big red herring. The real issue confronting us is the flawed
literacy method used in most of our schools and taught to trainee
teachers in our universities - namely the whole language
approach. This approach, which was taken up by academics and
schools over thirty years ago, may have been well intentioned,
but it was/is not well founded.
The
whole language approach is based on the false premise
that since children naturally acquire speech by exposure to
the spoken language of the group they are born into, that the
same will hold true for reading and writing.
The theory goes: immerse the children in stories read
aloud and they will naturally come to read and write. The Australian
education industry (including our universities) has failed to
acknowledge research findings - both local and international,
and available over the past thirty years - that the whole
language approach would fail many children, and that a
systematic phonic approach to teaching literacy, should
be employed. Humans are genetically endowed with the ability
to acquire speech. But reading and writing are learned skills
- as human history has consistently shown us.
The
first thing that a teacher of English to beginners must do is
see how spoken English is transformed into its written form.
English is an alphabetic language. We use the letters of the
alphabet to represent our speech sounds. Teaching someone to
read and write means explaining how the alphabetic code of English
works. This is not done in most of our schools.
Yours
faithfully,
Faye Berryman, English Co-ordinator, Fitzroy Community School.
The
Phonic Approach
"The
Phonic Approach" is one of the established methods of teaching
children to read and write English. Its main rival is "The
Whole Language" approach. The Whole Language approach presents
children with words without exploring the sounds of the component
letters. The child is expected to become familiar with the look
of the word and remember the spoken word to which it corresponds.
The
Phonic Approach, by contrast, introduces children firstly to
the letters of the alphabet and their basic sounds. Beginning
with simple words, children learn how words are formed from
these component letters. English uses combinations of letters
(eg: sh, th, etc.) to make particular sounds. And there are
of course some English words whose spelling does not conform
to any phonic principles. These words must still be learned
as "whole words".
Objections
to the whole word approach include the fact that children cannot
decipher words they have never seen and are therefore at the
mercy of their schooling for their vocabulary. With the phonic
approach children can learn whole families of words at once
- for example the ay words.
Having
learned the sound of ay the student can then read:
bay, day, gay, hay, lay, may, pay, ray, say, way, stay, play,
pray, tray, sway, etc.
Phonic
Reading System
Before
you start to read the Fitzroy Readers, you must learn the basic
sound of each letter - A for APPLE, B for BOY, C for
CAT etc.
As
well as basic sounds, there are extra
sounds, represented by digraphs such as AY, ALL or
EW. Words which are spelled according to the basic sounds
of English and the extra sounds of English
are sounding words. Basic sounds and extra
sounds are phonic rules. Most English
words are spelled according to phonic rules.
Each
Fitzroy Reader story teaches a new phonic rule.
For example,
Story 15 teaches the extra sound ALL. The sound
ALL is listed as the new sound for Story 15.
(“new sound” means the same as “extra sound”)
Before
you read each Fitzroy Reader, look on the back cover to see
what new sound is being used.
Also
printed on the back cover of each Fitzroy Reader are the special
words used in the new story. These are words which
do not follow the phonic rules we have learned so far.
Some
words are special words because they do not
follow any phonic rule, for example, EYE and THEIR. These are
not sounding words, but must simply be learned by rote.
There
are some words in each story whose phonic rule has not been
learned yet. For example, the word WITH in Story 7.
The
word WITH will be listed as a special word
for story 7. This word will have to be learned before reading
Story 7.
Later,
in Story 27, the phonic rule concerning TH will be learned,
and WITH will no longer be a special word.
The
Fitzroy stories must be studied in numerical order, because
later readers use the phonic rules of earlier
readers.
The
Fitzroy Method
Welcome to the Fitzroy
Readers. The Fitzroy
Method is the most modern, most
efficient and easiest way to learn to speak, read and write
English.
With the Fitzroy Method, we do not simply learn
English words, one by one. We do something far more efficient.
We learn to decode English words. We
look at a word and we sound out the
letters.
Many English words lend themselves to this practice
very readily, easy words like cat and
dog. And there are many longer sounding
words like picnic, fantastic,
and expect.
We provide stories for children to read. The first
several stories are deliberately written
with words which are easily decoded in this simple way. These
early books establish the concept of reading by decoding. This
also builds confidence and gets children reading English very
quickly.
Beyond this very simple group, there are many English
words that are easy to decode once the necessary “secret”
codes are learned – for example, the letters “ee”
together represent the sound ee as in
tree. Once they have learned this simple
rule, they are immediately able to read out a whole family of
words such as bee, bleed, deep, feed, jeep, see,
seen, steep, street, teen, weed, etc
Each Fitzroy Reader (storybook) introduces a new
code such as “ee” and then presents a story for
children emphasizing the ee sound. The
story also uses all the words we have previously learned to
read and spell.
Thus we are reading steadily all the way through
the curriculum. We do not have to wait until we have learned
a great many words before we can read interesting stories. When
we learn each new spelling code, we
suddenly acquire not just one new word, but many
new words all at once – all the words which use that spelling
pattern.
As we move on, we learn some more elaborate patterns
such as the a-e, where the two letters
a and e are
separated by a letter, as in bake, cake, date, fame,
game, hate, lake, make, name, rake, same, tame, wake,
etc. Once again we learn many new words all at once. Similarly
for i-e as in time,
o-e as in poke,
and u-e as in flute.
And once again, as we introduce each new spelling
pattern, we present a new story that includes many words with
that new pattern – as well as any of the words we have
learned before. Progress is very fast using this technique.
There are some spelling codes that use 3 or 4 letters. Take
for example, all as in ball,
fall, tall, hall, etc. Later in the program, we
present patterns such as tion as in
action, nation, fraction, etc.
Of course there are some words which do not obey
these rules. There are 50 very common small English words which
must be learned by sight. Words such
as a, of, the, to, you, etc.
We introduce 1 or 2 of these "sight" words
with each early story, clearly warning the student that these
are special words that do not follow
the rules. We call these special words
so that students will not confuse themselves by trying to sound
them out.
If you do not count these 50 most common sight words,
over 95% of written English does conform
to the code rules that we teach.
There are some words that have odd spellings such
as eye and yacht.
We present a few of these special words
with each of the later stories for older children. This way,
only a few words of English must be learned by heart for each
story.
Many
thousands of children have experienced breakthroughs in learning
English from the Fitzroy Readers.
In Australia, more than 3500 schools have
bought the Fitzroy Readers. In Singapore, it has grant its footing that apart from
Schools, parents are using them!
We recommend them to you.
Age
Levels for Fitzroy Readers
Year Levels
There is no simple answer to the question of age levels
for each Fitzroy Reader. There is great variation amongst children
in reading readiness and stage of progress.
Individual Assessment
The best approach is to look through the readers with the individual
child. If you are satisfied that they can safely read the last
book from a given pack of readers, then you would start with
the next higher pack.
(It is best not to skip a pack of readers unless you are sure
the child has learned the new sounds presented
in them (ay, all ew, etc) and the special
words (said, through, etc). These sounds
and special words are assumed in all later readers.)
A Rough Guide - Fitzroy Readers and Age Levels
|
Readers Pack
|
Reading Recovery Level
|
Level for Singapore
(Rough Guide)
For LSP English, Seeds,
LMH
|
Age of Child for Singapore
(Rough Guide)
|
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Readers 1-10
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RRL 1-5
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1st year primary
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4-5 years old
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Readers 1x-10x
|
RRL 1-5
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1st year primary
2nd year primary
|
5 years old
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|
Readers 11-20
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RRL 6-15
|
1st year primary
2nd year primary
3rd year primary
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6 years old
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Readers 21-30
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RRL 16-21
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2nd year primary
3rd year primary
4th year primary
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7-8 years old
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Readers 31-40
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RRL 22-26
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3rd year primary
4th year primary
5th year primary
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8-9 years old
|
|
Readers 41-50
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4th year primary
5th year primary
6th year primary
Early Secondary
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9-10 years old
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Readers 51-60
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5th year primary
6th year primary
Early Secondary
|
10-11 years old
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- Some children respond to the
phonic build-up of vocabulary very quickly, and may race through
the readers more quickly than shown on the table.
- If they are learning to write
as they go, the process takes longer. This involves being
able to write sentences that are read out to them from a reader.
- Some children are later readers
and may be working on Readers 51-60 in early secondary school.
Reading
Recovery Levels Table
*Legend: RRL: Reading Recovery Level, Sequence: Sequence Within
Level, Reader: Fitzroy Reader Number, Title: Title of Story,
Pack: Pack.
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RRL
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Sequence
|
Reader
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Title
|
PACK
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1
|
a
|
1
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A Fat Cat
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1-10
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b
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2
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A Big Pig
|
1-10
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c
|
3
|
Bug on a Rug
|
1-10
|
|
d
|
4
|
Dot
|
1-10
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|
e
|
5
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The Pet Hen
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1-10
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f
|
1x
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Ann and Mal
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1x-10x
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g
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2x
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Tom Cat & Jim Rat
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1x-10x
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|
2
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a
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6
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Fox on the Box
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1-10
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b
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7
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I Can Run
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1-10
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c
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3x
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The Mud Hut
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1x-10x
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|
d
|
4x
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Ants at the Camp
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1x-10x
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3
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a
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8
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The Picnic
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1-10
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b
|
5x
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The Big Mess
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1x-10x
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|
c
|
6x
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The Sick Dog
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1x-10x
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|
4
|
a
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9
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My Pup
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1-10
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|
b
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7x
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The Land of Zond
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1x-10x
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c
|
8x
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The Bus Stop
|
1x-10x
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|
5
|
a
|
10
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John and his Fox
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1-10
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b
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9x
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The Billabong
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1x-10x
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c
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10x
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Cat and Kitten
|
1x-10x
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6
|
|
11
|
The Animals
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PACK 11-20
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|
7
|
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12
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My Lost Bear
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8
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13
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The Frog and the Fly
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9
|
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14
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The Girl and the Boy
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|
10
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15
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Tall and Small
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|
11
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|
16
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Buns and Eggs
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|
12
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17
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The Fish
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|
13
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18
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Dad and the Kids
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14
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19
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Mark and Mars
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|
15
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20
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Wombat
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|
16
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21
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Woodpecker
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PACK 21-30
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|
17
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a
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22
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Rabbit Wants a Carrot
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|
b
|
23
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The Girls & the Ball
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18
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a
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24
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Cat, Dog, and Vet
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b
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25
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Tom and Benji
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|
19
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a
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26
|
Eight Frogs & the Snake
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PACK 21-30
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|
b
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27
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Tabitha and Thug
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20
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a
|
28
|
Love
|
|
b
|
29
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Owl & the Clown
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|
21
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|
30
|
Jessica
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|
22
|
a
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31
|
Kate and the Rake
|
PACK 31-40
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|
b
|
32
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The Boat
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|
23
|
a
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33
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On the Hill
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|
b
|
34
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The Cat and the Fish
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|
24
|
a
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35
|
Dolly Duck
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|
b
|
36
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Captain Hornblower
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|
25
|
a
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37
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Flying Doctor Service
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|
b
|
38
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David the Duck
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|
26
|
a
|
39
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Silas the Cat
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b
|
40
|
Shawn & the Go-Kart
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LEVEL
OF DIFFICULTY
FOLLOWS
ON
IN
SMALL LOGICAL STEPS
THROUGH
TO READINESS FOR SECONDARY EDUCATION
|
41
|
Tim Comes to Stay
|
PACK 41-50
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|
42
|
The Bear Next Door
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|
43
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Ling Goes to China
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|
44
|
Cindy's Trip to Perth
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|
45
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Sir John & the Bear Brothers
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46
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Arthur and the Crayfish
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|
47
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The New Year Party
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48
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Inconvenient Puncture
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49
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The Grass is Greener
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|
50
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The Wisdom of Solomon
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51
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Paul’s Principle
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PACK 51-60
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52
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The Dirt Track
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53
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Athlete Pete
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54
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Meeting the Challenge
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55
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Transported
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56
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David and Goliath
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57
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Excavations
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58
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Andrew and Diana
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59
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Lost and Won
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60
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The Facts of Life
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