What is Elemental!
Elemental is a reading practice programme based on scientific research and an adaptation of an effective and scientifically backed-up Dutch phonics programme. It is designed to support young children in their reading journey and is tailored to support those who experience reading as challenging.
Elemental is a phonics programme developed by linguists, developmental psychologists and reading experts with careful consideration of the government’s guidelines for phonics and input from a team of primary school teachers. It covers the full Early Years reading curriculum and all the phonics phases. Each phonics phase will be represented by a city, the Earth City (phase 2), the Water City (phase 3), the Air City (phase 4) and the Fire City (phase 5).
Elemental’s short online lessons focus on phonological awareness, grapheme knowledge, blending and segmenting, reading of tricky words and sentence reading, and it will even offer some early reading comprehension. Each lesson is designed such that it can be used in a whole-class setting, small-group setting or in a one-to-one setting.
One of Elemental’s distinctive lesson features that is worth highlighting, is the building lesson. In this lesson children will use the minimal pairing technique to make words. For example, children are asked to take the word <sit> and to replace the <t> with <p>, creating <sip>. They are then asked to replace the <s> with <t>, creating <tip>, and so on. This scientifically backed-up technique used in the building lesson helps children focus on all grapheme positions in a word, leading to improvements in decoding, reading comprehension and phonological awareness.
All lessons include colourful illustrations and a variety of exercises. In this manner the programme not only helps children learn to read but also makes the learning fun. It is designed to be an easy tool for teachers to plan their lessons and fun inciting experience for students.
Pilot Elemental!
We need your expertise.
For the upcoming pilot, we are looking for reception classes that are willing to use Elemental! as part of their reading lessons. If you participate, we will ask you to use the programme to teach the children to sound out their first graphemes, read their first words and even their first sentences. You could use Elemental! in a class setting and/or in a small group setting and/or in a one-to-one setting. We will ask the teachers/tutors who used the programme to fill out a questionnaire about topics like programme content, usability, and design.
Are you:
- An Early Years/Reception Teacher
- Teaching in English
- Willing to start the reading curriculum with Elemental!
Then you can help us by registering for our pilot and completing a short questionnaire about Elemental! at the end.
Whats in it for you?
In exchange for your participation, you will receive a free one-year subscription once the full programme is released.
Sign up for more information
