The dark thing

The Red Squirrel Reading Road series supports older primary school students to consolidate and master their phonic knowledge through reading age-appropriate engaging texts. The relatable fiction titles include characters that will appeal to older students and the non-fiction titles provide easily accessible information about varied topics.

Reading Road can be used as an intervention series to give students who may not believe that they can tackle books written for their age group confidence in reading. It is also appropriate for all students who would like to reinforce their existing phonics knowledge with longer books and a larger word count.

Each book includes teacher notes on the inside front and back covers which focus on some of the sounds and focus words in each book and provide suggested discussion points for after reading. Teaching notes and student worksheets to support each title are also available as free downloads from the Raintree.co.uk website.

The books in Reading Road Level 1 feature simple and complex code including consonants, consonant digraphs, short vowels, vowel digraphs and trigraphs, and r-controlled vowels. They are decodable by students who have reached the end of Red Squirrel Level 5 or Letters and Sounds Phase 3, and so can be used to support students that have been taught using a wide range of different SSP programmes.

This is a Level 1 book. Down at the park, Jack sees a dark thing high in the oak tree. It has dark fur, a tail, long legs and big teeth. And Jack thinks he heard it hiss. But what is it? Jack and his friend, Chen, investigate!