Reading Elephant Phonics Books is a series of 120 short readers that support an intensive phonics approach to reading for children in kindergarten through second grade. The readers can also be used with older students who struggle with reading.
The readers are grouped into 17 series, and they are sold in groups of books or as the entire set. They are all available as PDF files, and the first five series (24 books) are also available bound into a single printed book sold by Amazon. You can print out the PDFs if you wish, and children might want to color some of the illustrations.
These readers are intended to support reading instruction using another resource. They do not teach the basics, such as the identification of sounds and letters and blending.
The first five series each concentrate on words with one of the short-vowel sounds. These readers also introduce 15 sight words. The first four series each have four books, while the fifth (for short-e words) has eight books. The books include words taught in previous books, so the vocabulary expands fairly quickly.
The books have from one to eight pages each. (The few single-page books appear later in the series and present a multi-paragraph story on the page.) The books typically have more text per page than do many other phonetic readers. For instance, the second book for short-e words has four to six short sentences per page. This provides plenty of practice at each step.
Some of the series that have many readers are sold on their own rather than in groups of series. This is true for Series 6 (22 books using words with consonant digraphs), Series 7 (10 books using words with consonant blends), and Series 8 (12 books using words with silent-e at the end), which are all available as individual series.
Every page has a black-and-white illustration. The illustrations in the first few series might prompt students to guess at words, but the gradually increasing text soon makes that less feasible.
Purchasing the entire set of books is the most economical choice, but you have the option to purchase readers focusing on particular phonetic elements if you wish.
You can view a free sample on the publisher’s website before buying.
