Today's reading is not switched on yet. When it is, a Today tile will lead your child's home, and this page describes what it does. Until then, your child's home works as it does now.
The steps
For a child aged five to seven, a day goes like this:
- Look again. Up to six sounds and words that are due to come back, from the words your child has met and the sounds they have been taught. Thirty seconds to a minute.
- Today's sound. The day's short sound lesson: Pip shows the sound, you and your child try it together, then your child has a go. This is the same lesson as the word games.
- Words in your book. One to three heart words from the book, with the part to remember marked with a heart, and a few story words. Each has sound buttons, so your child hears each sound and then the whole word.
- Your book. A book written around the day's sound. A tapped word is sounded out first.
- Spell and answer. Two words and one sentence from the book, then two questions about what happened and one about why.
- Read a page again. The day always ends on a page your child already knows.
Your child can leave at any step and come back later. Every step has a "Not today" button, and nothing is counted against them for using it. No score, count or timer is ever shown to your child.
A day with a clear end
We are switching this on for families gradually, so you may not see it yet. When it is on, the day is shown to your child as four parts in order:
- Warm-up. Two to three minutes of listening for sounds, with no letters: hearing sounds and saying which word they make, counting the sounds in a word, and saying a word without its first sound. For children aged five to seven, and older children still learning early sounds.
- Lesson. The sounds and words that are due to come back, the day's sound, and the words in the book.
- Tonight's book. The book, then the short spelling and questions.
- Read it again. A page they know. Where Listen, then read it again is on, Pip reads the page first and then your child reads it back (see My sounds, My words and "I can read" cards).
The day is planned to take about ten to fifteen minutes. When it is done, the screen says That's today's reading. Your child can go back to their books, or pick something else to read if they want to. Nothing asks them to.
If a sitting runs past twenty minutes, Pip suggests once, calmly, that this is a good place to stop. Your child can stop or keep going; nothing is locked and nothing is lost. The next day starts fresh. There are no streaks, and nothing counts how many days in a row your child has read.
To tell one sitting from the next, we note when your child opened Today and when they last answered a step. We only use this to make that one suggestion, never show it to your child, and keep it with the day's other steps for three months. The warm-up's answers are not kept at all.
By age
- Two to five: a listening game, then a book read to them with a question for you on each page, a retell, and one "say it with me" word. There are no letters unless you turn on Letter sounds from four in their Reading settings.
- Seven to nine: the lesson may be another way to spell a sound (such as ai, ay and a-e) or a word ending, and there is one richer word before the book. The last page is read again for smoothness, and no time is shown or kept.
- Nine to twelve: the lesson is about word parts, and there is one reading strategy to keep in mind, such as saying what happened in two sentences.
- Older readers still learning early sounds get the five to seven steps, with lessons made for their age.
Tomorrow's book
At the end of each day we choose tomorrow's sound and start a book for it, so it is ready when your child comes back. It is made like any book your child asks for, from the choices in their last book, and it uses one book from your plan in the same way.
We never start it when your plan has no books left. If tomorrow's book is not ready, your child reads one of these instead, in this order:
- one of our own books written for that sound, read and approved by a person before it is published;
- a book from our shared shelf written for that sound;
- two short practice passages for that sound.
If a book seemed hard lately, meaning many words on a page needed help, tomorrow stays on the same sound until books feel easier.
How the day's choices are made
Our own rules choose the day's sound from the sounds your child is working on and the ones due to come back, which sounds and words come back first, which version of a lesson they see, which sounds tomorrow's book brings back, and whether a tired sitting skips its short check. None of these can move your child's phonics phase or change what a book written for their sounds may contain.
Once you have agreed to the version of our privacy notice that describes it, and learning is on, we also ask a decision service, Typesafe, which of the same options it would pick, so we can check whether it would teach better. Your child still gets what our rules chose. Typesafe is sent your child's age group and phonics phase and a few numbers about each option, such as how well a sound is known on a scale of 0 to 4. It is never sent your child's name, the words they read or said, or any book's title.
What we keep
- Which steps each day had, which were done and which were passed over with "Not today", what your child read, and the sound and book started for the next day. We do not keep how any step went here. We keep it for three months.
- How the spelling and the questions went, as the word games and a book's questions always have. This is only kept if you have turned on learning, and it is deleted when you turn learning off.
- Where learning is on, the words your child was shown before a book, so they count as taught in that book. These are deleted when you turn learning off.
- Where learning is on and you have agreed, each of the choices above: the options by their code names, which was used, what our rules and Typesafe each picked, and afterwards how the chosen sound went at the next sitting and how many days it took to be secure. We keep this for three months, and it is deleted when you turn learning off.
You can see today's plan on your child's page in your account, in plain words, for example "Today: the sound /ai/, then Rain on the Den."
Turning it off
In your child's settings, under Reading, switch off Today's reading. Their home goes back to showing their books and the word games separately. You can turn it on again at any time.
If your family joined the reading study and is in the group without Today's reading, it stays off for the eight weeks whatever this switch says, and comes back on its own afterwards.