Children learn to read most intuitively by connecting two things they already know: the letters of the alphabet, and the sound of words. This course provides a curriculum for teachers, including parents, siblings and child-minders, to use to introduce this way of reading to their children.

Children also learn to read by sight, memorizing images of whole words, without thinking about the individual letters. It’s not hard to memorise simple words like fan or duck this way. After seeing the words on the page and hearing them spoken a few times, a child will soon recognize them whenever she sees them.

But with words like “fantastic” or “duckling,” learning to read by sight is more challenging, because eight or nine letters are a lot to process into an image and commit to memory.

Sounding out is the key to solving this problem. If a child knows the sounds made by A, I, C, N, F, and S, then when she sees fantastic on the page, she can go through the letters one by one, combining their sounds into a word: Ffff aaa nnn ttt aaa sss ttt iii ccc.

hildren won’t learn to do this by sitting alone in front of a screen and watching the videos. The videos are not designed for this. They are a tool for teachers, including parents, siblings and other child-minders, for showing children how sounding out works.

To be effective, teachers should watch the videos with their children, and pause them frequently to ask children to read aloud what they are seeing. The can also make letter cards, as explained in the introduction, to practice these skills on the kitchen table.