Fitzroy Program

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Fitzroy Alphabet Book


Provides 50 worksheets for sounding and writing the alphabet. Includes alphabetical order and two-letter words. Leads directly into the Readers and the Word Skills. This book has 50 x A4 pages designed for absolute beginners. The first 5 pages help with the forming of lines and circles. Then there is a page for each letter - help with writing, sounding and recognising. There are many activity pages helping with discrimination, alphabetical order, and forming two-letter words.

The activities in this Alphabet Book are designed for absolute beginners, including pre-writing and letter formation. They are complete preparation for Fitzroy Readers 1 to 10 and for the Fitzroy Word Skills Activity Book 1.

Fitzroy Alphabetics Game

This is a word-making game using English letters and digraphs. There are two types of activities, one for beginners, and the other for older children and adults (50 possible levels).

The package contains graded word lists, clear instructions for the teaching activities and rules for the higher table games. Now with a SHORT RULES sheet for those who want to get straight into the game. It is ideal for helping slow beginners. Also includes enjoyable after-dinner game for literate adults.

 

The Fitzroy Method: Brief Explanation

The Fitzroy Program of Readers and Word Skills is not an ordinary set of story books and written activities with some phonics hints thrown in. It is systematic phonics.

You teach letters of the alphabet and the sounds they represent. You explain that a written word is a string of letters showing sounds from the left to right.

You teach children the skill of decoding English as they encounter it outside the classroom.

There are hundreds of thousands of English words. You cannot hope to teach them all! That's why the Fitzroy Method teaches students how to approach new words, by understanding sounds and digraphs.

The Fitzroy Method: How is it done?

Begin by talking about sounds, then joining of sounds, thus making words. Our alphabet represents sounds, both by single letters (a, b, c....) and by digraphs (ch, ew, tion...). From sounds such as a, h and t we make words such as hat.

The Fitzroy Readers systematically introduce sounds one by one with each story. The Fitzroy Method ensures fast progress and successful remediation because there are no surprises. Each new story uses only:

  • the sounds and words learned in previous stories,
  • the new sound that this story makes memorable, and
  • a few new special words, that is sight-words which we do not attempt to sound out, because they do not conform to the rules (at least not to any that we have learned so far

The Fitzroy Method: Why it works

Children like rules. They retain far more if taught rules and exceptions rather than item-by-item.

Systematic phonics rewards children with regular victories. It is fun to know how to decipher a whole new family of words at a time - rather than having to endure a slow process of rote accumulation.

The Fitzroy Method is motivating because children love to go home with new skills that work in the world outside of school, prized skills that they can demonstrate within their own communities - such as reading signs, notes, labels, lists, stories, instructions, dictionaries:-

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.

For more details on the Phonic Approach and the Fitzroy Program, click here

For a brief glimpse of the Fitzroy range, please click the below image to download the flyer or click here (approx. 200 KB)

Fitzroy Readers

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 1 - 10

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 1x - 10x

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 11 - 20

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 21 - 30

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 31 - 40

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 41 - 50

Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 51 - 60

Suitable for beginners who have learned most of the sounds of the alphabet. Readers 1-10 use only basic sounds, except for Story 9, which introduces the diagraph oo as in roof. Readers 11-60 features a basic English sound (eg. oy), a few sight words (eg.said), a revision word list and an extension word list.

  Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 1 - 10   Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 1x - 10x
1 A Fat Cat 1x Ann and Mal
2 A Big Pig 2x Tom Cat and Jim Rat
3 Bug on a Rug 3x The Mud Hut
4 Dot 4x Ants at the Camp
5 The Pet Hen 5x The Big Mass
6 Fox on the Box 6x The Sick Dog
7 I Can Run 7x The Land of Zond
8 The Picnic 8x The Bus Stop
9 My Pup 9x The Billabong
10 John and His Fox 10x Cat and Kitten
  Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 11 - 20   Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 21 - 30
11 The Animals 21 Woodpecker
12 My Lost Bear 22 Rabbit Wants a Carrot
13 The Frog & the Fly 23 The Girls & the Ball
14 The Girl & the Boy 24 Cat, Dog & Vet
15 Tall and Small 25 Tom and Benji
16 Buns and Eggs 26 Eight Frogs & Snake
17 The Fish 27 Tabitha and Thug
18 Dad and the Kids 28 Love
19 Mark and Mars 29 Owl and the Clown
20 Wombat 30 Jessica
  Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 31 - 40   Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 41 - 50
31 Kate & the Rake 41 Tim Comes to Stay
32 The Boat 42 The Bear Next Door
33 On the Hill 43 Ling Goes to China
34 The Cat & the Fish 44 Cindy's Trip to Perth
35 Dolly Duck 45 Sir John & Bear Brothers
36 Captain Hornblower 46 Arthur & the Crayfish
37 Flying Doctor 47 The New Year Party
38 David the Duck 48 Inconvenience Puncture
39 Silas the Cat 49 The Grass is Greener
40 Shawn & the Go-Cart 50 The Wisdom of Solomon
  Fitzroy Readers (10 Titles) 51 - 60    
51 Paul's Principle    
52 The Dirt Track    
53 Athlete Pete    
54 Meeting the Challenge    
55 Transported    
56 David & Goliath    
57 Excavations    
58 Andrew & Diana    
59 Lost & Won    
60 The Facts of Life    

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Fitzroy Word Skills 1 to 5

Workbooks to use alongside the Readers.
Book 1 to 5 support a set of 10 readers, devoting 7 pages of activities to each story.

Word Skills 6A & 6B are carefully designed so as not to waste time on unnecessary and abstruse matters. It is practical for today’s world. It enables students:

1. to speak intelligently about the structure of English

2. to use English correctly in ways which are still considered important in today's world

3. to know the standard terms of grammar, noun, verb, prefix, tense, preposition, etc - exactly as they are used in the world today in publishing, journalism, philosophy, etc

4. to have the necessary grammatical knowledge to tackle a language other than English

5. to enjoy the workings of English, to expand vocabulary and to write more artfully.

Fitzroy Word Skills 6A

Workbooks to use alongside the Readers. Books 6A supports stories 51-55 with 14 pages for each story. These Word Skills advance the student further in spelling, punctuation and basic grammar. (They also include more advanced activities for the students who progress faster,) Fitzroy Word Skills Number 6A has the essentials of grammar for busy modern students. These can be used by students working on stories 51-55.

Word Skills 6A is designed in A4 size page modules, making each topic a digestible activity for one session. Written in a large, generous, easy format, and presented in small logical steps, this work book provided a friendly approach for anyone trying to master English grammar.

Fitzroy Word Skills 6B

Workbooks to use alongside the Readers. Books 6B supports stories 56-60 with 14 pages for each story. Fitzroy Word Skills Number 6B has the essentials of grammar for busy modern students. These can be used by students working on stories 56-60.

Word Skills 6B is designed in A4 size page modules, making each topic a digestible activity for one session. Written in a large, generous, easy format, and presented in small logical steps, this work book provided a friendly approach for anyone trying to master English grammar.

Fitzroy Word Skills Answer Books 1 to 5

Answers provided for Word Skills 1 to 6. Each answer page shows the full question page with the answers marked in. The level of English in each worksheet of the Word Skills is taken from the corresponding Fitzroy Reader.

Fitzroy Reader Audio CD

Containing ten of the Reader stories in each CD.

These are careful pronunciations to cater for ESL students, for slow students and for story telling.

Fitzroy Sounds (includes 2 CD's)

The phonetic disk provides the phonetically correct sound for each letter. For example, the 'f' sound is voiceless and continuous as it sounds at the end of 'cliff'. This one is specially recommended for ESL students.

The traditional disk provides an alternative way of sounding 13 of the letters. This is to accommodate teachers who use the traditional soundings such as 'fhhh!' (voiced ploseive), as in 'fish' without the 'sh'.

Teacher's Guide

This book fills a gap for many teachers who have not yet learned how to exploit the phonic features of English.

Phonic methods are the secret to early literacy, as has been borne out by the phenomenal success of our materials in saving the literacy of many children across the country.

Include sample lesson plans, spelling list and assessment tools for each level. This book is especially suitable for the Singapore market as some ideas are supplied with the help of the Singapore exclusive distributor, September 21 Enterprise Pte Ltd.

For more information on the Fitzroy workshop, check out our forthcoming workshops, click here

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

Readers 1-10

RRL 1-5

1st year primary

4-5 years old

Readers 1x-10x

RRL 1-5

1st year primary

2nd year primary

5 years old

Readers 11-20

RRL 6-15

1st year primary

2nd year primary

3rd year primary

6 years old

Readers 21-30

RRL 16-21

2nd year primary

3rd year primary

4th year primary

7-8 years old

Readers 31-40

RRL 22-26

3rd year primary

4th year primary

5th year primary

8-9 years old

Readers 41-50  

4th year primary

5th year primary

6th year primary

Early Secondary

9-10 years old
Readers 51-60  

5th year primary

6th year primary

Early Secondary

10-11 years old
  • 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.

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Reading Recovery Levels Table

*Legend: RRL: Reading Recovery Level, Sequence: Sequence Within Level, Reader: Fitzroy Reader Number, Title: Title of Story, Pack: Pack.

RRL Sequence Reader Title PACK
1 a 1 A Fat Cat 1-10
b 2 A Big Pig 1-10
c 3 Bug on a Rug 1-10
d 4 Dot 1-10
e 5 The Pet Hen 1-10
f 1x Ann and Mal 1x-10x
g 2x Tom Cat & Jim Rat 1x-10x
2 a 6 Fox on the Box 1-10
b 7 I Can Run 1-10
c 3x The Mud Hut 1x-10x
d 4x Ants at the Camp 1x-10x
3 a 8 The Picnic 1-10
b 5x The Big Mess 1x-10x
c 6x The Sick Dog 1x-10x
4 a 9 My Pup 1-10
b 7x The Land of Zond 1x-10x
c 8x The Bus Stop 1x-10x
5 a 10 John and his Fox 1-10
b 9x The Billabong 1x-10x
c 10x Cat and Kitten 1x-10x
6 11 The Animals Pack 11-20
7 12 My Lost Bear
8 13 The Frog and the Fly
9 14 The Girl and the Boy
10 15 Tall and Small
11 16 Buns and Eggs
12 17 The Fish
13 18 Dad and the Kids
14 19 Mark and Mars
15 20 Wombat
16 21 Woodpecker Pack 21-30
17 a 22 Rabbit Wants a Carrot
b 23 The Girls & the Ball
18 a 24 Cat, Dog, and Vet
b 25 Tom and Benji
19 a 26 Eight Frogs & the Snake Pack 21-30
b 27 Tabitha and Thug
20 a 28 Love
b 29 Owl & the Clown
21 30 Jessica
22 a 31 Kate and the Rake Pack 31-40
b 32 The Boat
23 a 33 On the Hill
b 34 The Cat and the Fish
24 a 35 Dolly Duck
b 36 Captain Hornblower
25 a 37 Flying Doctor Service
b 38 David the Duck
26 a 39 Silas the Cat
b 40 Shawn & the Go-Kart

LEVELS OF DIFFICULTY
FOLLOWS ON
IN SMALL LOGICAL STEPS
THROUGH TO READINESS
FOR SECONDARY EDUCATION

41 Tim Comes to Stay Pack 41-50
42 The Bear Next Door
43 Ling Goes to China
44 Cindy's Trip to Perth
45 Sir John & the Bear Brothers
46 Arthur and the Crayfish
47 The New Year Party
48 Inconvenient Puncture
49 The Grass is Greener
50 The Wisdom of Solomon
51 Paul's Principle Pack 51-60
52 The Dirt Track
53 Athlete Pete
54 Meeting the Challenge
55 Transported
56 David and Goliath
57 Excavations
58 Andrew and Diana
59 Lost and Won
60 The Facts of Life

 

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Fitzroy Workshop

Ultimately the strength of any educational institution, be it a kindergarten, primary school or university, rests on the quality of its teaching personnel. Fundamental to this teacher quality is teacher training. Get the training right and you're over halfway to success.

The only program endorsed by Fitzroy Programs, creators of the Fitzroy Method. The Fitzroy workshops are held regularly at the Da Vinci seminar room, September 21 Enterprise Pte Ltd. It provides teachers with the knowledge and tools necessary to ensure that they get the most from their students and teaching material. The course is comprehensive, lively and hands-on. Upon its completion participants will be equipped with everything they need to know to teach the Fitzroy Method with confidence, skill - and a sense of pleasure. Units include:


- The Fitzroy Method: system, method and structure. How and why it works
- First steps in the Fitzroy Method: Where to begin and how to proceed

The Fitzroy Workshop comprises
- Revision of all the important digraphs and sounds (and how best to teach them)
- Creative writing: simple strategies for a solid foundation
- Formal writing for young students (e.g. essay): creating complex ideas in simple ways
- Advanced grammar: secondary school grammar for primary school students
- Public speaking: why your child will never fear it again and the Fitzroy Community School's secret
- How to conduct a class: making lessons memorable and techniques for rapid learning
- Tests and techniques for effective classroom assessment
- Accelerated learning: how to use what you already know. Fostering creativity in the classroom
- Psychology of teaching: how to get the best out of your students. Things to do, things to avoid
- Classroom games and activities: numerous practical teaching exercises and classroom activities
- Answers to perennial questions such as: 'at what age should a child start learning to read' and
'how long should it take for your child to develop reading fluency'


Participants can complete a short assessment. A successful pass awards you with a Fitzroy Teachers' Certification, this certifies you are competent to teach the Fitzroy Method.


Fitzroy Teacher's Guide Book

Ultimately the strength of any educational institution, be it a kindergarten, primary school or university, rests on the quality of its teaching personnel. Fundamental to this teacher quality is teacher training. Get the training right and you're over halfway to success.

For more information on the Fitzroy workshop,
check out our forthcoming workshops only at September 21 Enterprise

If you have any questions regarding the Fitzroy Program send an email to: info@september21.com.sg

 

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