Teach the World to Read provides a globally recognised reading program that is designed for developing communities. Since its creation in 1999, more than 11 million children and adults have received the program free of charge. It has been donated to more than 130 NGOs and is in use in more than 90 countries.
Fantastic Phonics is a complete learning system, with a print-based version designed for low-technology, a digital version on the internet, and our most stunning development, a offline, digital version designed for communities who have limited access to the internet.
Print-based version:
- learn-to-read storybooks that can be printed on standard office paper. 480 pages of phonic story text and images
- 480 page learning program that is designed for preschool, kindergarten, teenagers, and adult literacy.
- Downloadable, printable on standard paper
- 60 teacher training guides
- onsite training for teachers, anywhere in the world.
Digital Internet version:
- 40 multimedia shows which teach the sounds of the letters and their pronunciation
- 30 animated videos to explore the storybooks
- word-search apps, digital challenges for alphabet training and word skills
- spelling, handwriting, comprehension, visual coordination, decoding skills
- onsite training for teachers, anywhere in the world.
Offline Digital version:
- Designed for communities with limited/no internet
- can be run on computers or pads
- specifically coded for the 'Rachel' wireless micro-server from 'Worldpossible.org'
- contains all the rich multimedia of the digital system PLUS all the print resources
- a total package for teachers, children and classrooms
- onsite training for teachers, anywhere in the world.
How does Fantastic Phonics work?
Fantastic Phonics teaches the relationships between letters and sounds, so that children can learn the skill of 'decoding' text by 'sounding out' the letters, to create a word from the text.
Phonics has been shown to be the ONLY successful reading solution, and Fantastic Phonics has been proven to give children a 450% increase in reading performance (see the Liberian research).
Fantastic Phonics teaches by demonstrating the 48 core phonics sounds, so that children can predict the sounds of a word as they read. This allows them to rapidly develop "independent reading", meaning that when they encounter an unknown word, they can "sound out" the letters to create a word they have heard.
Fantastic Phonics is comprehensive. It contains the 220 'core words' identified as essential for fluent reading. It teaches the sounds of the vowels, and the sounds of vowel blends, and the sounds of consonant letters and blends.
As a package it has every element of success for wide-scale, country wide teaching. The program is easy to train teachers with - large groups can be trained, and then become trainers themselves.
There are 60 storybooks with a consistent, explicit learning procedure - once the technique is learnt for one story-book, the same skills can be applied over and over. There are no tricky games or marketing tricks or "fun" diversions which teach nothing - the program is a focused set of techniques for teachers that can be transferred easily to students, even in a large class of 50 or 60 or even more.
Government Research.
Fantastic Phonics is the free reading program, donated by Teach the World to Read. The program is used in an astonishing one half of the nations on earth. USAID funded a major research program to develop the most effective system for teaching developing communities. The program was implemented in Liberia, as part of a large scale assessment covering more than 600 schools.
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What USAID said about the EGRA Plus: Liberia program
Download >>> Liberia Program Evaluation Report - Executive Summary
"The EGRA Plus program did not simply increase the learning outcomes for children, it dramatically accelerated children's learning to an extent seldom found in educational or or social science research". (USAID)
"Decoding gains were key. Teaching children the ability to decode was an essential middle step to unlocking their fluency and comprehension levels. It was the largest percentage increase (nearly 600%) of any task. This seems to be where the program took off". (USAID)
"After 18 months, students in the “full” treatment group outperformed their peers in all reading skills, nearly tripling the gains made by the control group in oral reading fluency and reading comprehension."
EGRA: Plus had a particularly large impact on improving children’s decoding—the ability to break new words into sounds and link them together—a key to unlock fluency and comprehension."
"The full treatment group improved in reading fluency 4.5 times faster and in reading comprehension 5 times faster than the control group, accelerating children’s learning at the equivalent of three years of schooling in one year. The program is expanding under the USAID-supported Liberia Teacher Training Program." (RTI)
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