Little Learners Big World nonfiction

• Designed for children to apply their phonics skills and knowledge to read every word without guessing. The books follow the Little Learners Love Literacy explicit teaching sequence.
• A progression of nonfiction text features includes labels, headings, captions and fact boxes in stages 1-6. From stage 7 more features are introduced including contents and index, tables, diagrams.
• These factual texts showcase examples of various text types such as scrapbooks, adverts, procedures and tips. At stage 7 there are more types of texts to come, too, including persuasive texts, brochures, blogs and more!

You can take a look at the titles and example spreads further down this page. Or download the flyer here.

Speed sounds: these are the sounds and letters (phoneme-grapheme correspondences) that children will use to read (decode) the book. They should have been explicitly taught before attempting the book. The decodable book gives children an opportunity to apply their knowledge and to build fluency.

Heart words: heart words are common words that children need to ‘learn by heart’ as they cannot decode them yet. These heart words are used in the book and children need to know them before they start reading. Ask children to point to each word and read it.

Vocabulary check: Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for children's comprehension, especially in the early stages of learning to read. You'll find child-friendly definitions of words or phrases used in the book and a question to explore one of those words in more detail. These nonfiction books are packed with opportunities to explore vocabulary - whether it is vocabulary in the decodable text or related vocabulary that comes up incidentally through discussion.

Questions to talk about: Comprehension questions to check for understanding after reading the book. Children can refer back to the book to answer them - you don't need to use all of them, just pick a few.

Spark conversation with the Talk about it page at the end of each book. As well as requiring children to recall facts from the book, this page includes additional vocabulary and facts to explore, and a question to encourage curiosity.

Talking about the book after reading has lots of benefits including: 
* build vocabulary by using words from the book and learning related vocabulary (which might not be decodable yet) through discussion.
* they might need to re-read sections of the book, creating more decoding practice.
* deepen comprehension - children will retell and summarise information from the book. The questions ask children to relate the content of the book to personal experiences, compare and contrast and to think creatively.

 The Talk about it page is not decodable - it is designed for adults to read to children.

Use the QR code in the back of the book to explore more facts related to the topic and writing activities: 

Did you know?
An additional page of related facts to take children's learning about the topic further than the realms and restrictions of decodable text. These pages also include a 'Talk about it' question and 'Write about it' prompt. Designed for comprehension development - more vocabulary, more content knowledge, and more talk! 

Read, write and draw
One of LLLL's guiding principals is that children are never asked to do anything that is too hard or that they haven't been taught yet. In this activity children apply their knowledge to read (decode and recall heart words), write (encode and practise handwriting) and draw (to demonstrate comprehension).

A list of words from the book that include the focus phonemes and graphemes is included in every Big World nonfiction book.

Children can point to the words and read them for more decoding practice. Children should sound out and blend to read them if they cannot read them automatically yet.

Lots of decoding practice is vital for children to map words and read with increasing fluency (accuracy, speed, prosody).

You can download an A4 PDF version of every speed words list and print out for partner reading and fluency work in the classroom. You can also print the words and cut into cards for sorting activities, for example you could sort these words into two piles according to medial vowel sound /a/ and /i/. 

The Little Learners BIG WORLD small group and class book packs come with a set of small group reading notes for each book.

These notes provide guidance and activities for before, during and after reading when using the book with a group of 4-6 children.

Example vocabulary, word reading and comprehension questions or prompts are provided next to each spread of the book for quick reference.

A number of activity ideas are provided for after the small group reading session such as word building, word detective, word sorts and quick write dictations.

You can view a sample set of notes and further guidance in our blog post on Small group reading, or scroll down to browse the sample resources on this page.