Planning Guide

Lilac to Red (KS1)

Book Bands
Reception/P1
 Published by Pearson Education Limited, 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL.
[Link]
Text © Pearson Education Limited 2010, 2016, 2017
Series Editor: Kate Ruttle
Programme Consultants: Suzanne Baker and Shirley Bickler
Teaching Card authors: Catherine Baker, Celine George, Peter Gutiérrez, Anna Harrap, Louise Pocock,
Charlotte Raby, Sandy Shepard, Sarah Snashall and Kate Ruttle
Teaching Guide contributors: Gill Friel, Peter Gutiérrez, Christine Jenkins and Jane Wood
Typeset by BigTop and Wild Boar Design Limited, Oxford
Printed in the UK by Ashford Colour Press Ltd.
First published 2010
This edition published 2017
21 20 19 18 17
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Bug Club Planning Guide Reception (P1)
ISBN 978 1 292 19912 2
Copyright notice
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is copyright. Activity sheets may be freely
photocopied for classroom use in the purchasing institution. However, this material is copyright and
under no circumstances may copies be offered for sale. If you wish to use the material in any way
other than that specified, you must apply in writing to the publishers.
The publisher would like to thank the following individuals and organisations for permission to
reproduce copyright material:
Timmy Time: Timmy Wants to Win, Beep Beep, Timmy!, Timmy’s Snowball © and TM Aardman
Animations Ltd 2016. All Rights Reserved. 5, 14; Sarah and Duck: Cheer Up, Donkey!, Duck and the
Balloon, Sarah’s Tap Shoes © Karrot Entertainment Ltd Licensed by BBC Worldwide Ltd. 4, 13, 14;
Trucktown stories: Illustrations © 2010 JRS Worldwide, LLC. Published by arrangement with Simon
& Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. 4, 8, 12, 14, 24, 25; Rat and Cat stories: original
illustrations © Gabriele Antonini 2010. 4, 5, 13, 15; Daisy and Zac stories: original illustrations ©
Sharon Harmer 2010. 8, 11, 15, 23, 24, 25, 41; Eco Apes stories: original illustrations © Mark Chambers
2010. 15; Mermaids stories: original illustrations © Jessica Secheret 16; Grow a Flower: Design and
compilation © Dorling Kindersley Ltd 2010. 4; Reading and Writing Assessment Guidelines © Crown
copyright 2009, reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence; Early Years Age Profile ©
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2008.
All other original illustrations © Pearson Education Limited.
Bug Club characters illustrated by Finger Industries Ltd; The Bike Race, The Cake Sale Goo, The
Missing Masks and Jay at the Beach illustrated by Howard McWilliam; Dan the Duck illustrated by
Dave Pratt; Cat Is Sleeping and Can You See Cat? illustrated by Tracie Grimwood; King Pip and the
Wish, King Pip and the Dark Wood and King Pip and the Troll illustrated by Tamsin Ainslie.
The publisher would like to thank the following individuals and organisations for permission to
reproduce pictures:
Lindsay Edwards 41.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. Any
omissions will be rectified in subsequent printings if notice is given to the publishers.

2
Contents
Welcome to Bug Club 4
The Bug Club family 10
A finely levelled reading programme 12
Bug Club character clusters 14
Bug Club and comics: building visual literacy 16
Phonics Bug and Bug Club KS1 components charts 18
Making links across the curriculum 20
Reading at home with Bug Club 22
Assessing progress in reading
Assessment overview 30
Online assessment 31
Guided reading 32
Progression maps 37
Phonic assessment worksheets 38
Bug Club photocopy masters (PCMs) 41

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 Welcome to Bug Club
Bug Club is the first whole-school reading programme that links books with
an online reading world to teach today’s children to read. Combining rigorous
pedagogy with fantastic design and cutting edge technology, Bug Club provides
the whole solution to teaching children to read in the 21st century.
Engaging children in reading is at the core of Bug Club. It includes hundreds
of books from some of the best children’s authors and illustrators, well-loved
characters from picture books and TV, and includes a huge variety of fiction, non-
fiction and comics. Whilst written to be entertaining and appealing, Bug Club
books have also been developed with the latest phonics guidance in mind and
are aligned with Letters and Sounds. This means that children will feel confident
when working through this finely levelled reading programme and they can
develop their enjoyment of reading good books at the same time as improving
their phonic skills.

The books
The variety and volume of books available at each reading level means that there
is something to suit every child’s tastes, whether that be a popular TV or fiction
character, a non-fiction book on pirates or a comic.

4
Motivation for success
For all children, motivation is essential to becoming a successful reader. That is
why child enjoyment and engagement have been carefully considered every step
of the way in the design and development of Bug Club. The result is an array
of high-quality texts in a range of different formats that, if displayed around the
classroom, will look as if the children have stepped into their favourite bookshop
or library. This variety will excite and engage children – the boys as well as
the girls – so that they stay motivated and keep reading. The books are also
organised into clusters so that children will be motivated to extend their reading
skills to read the next book about their favourite characters.

Variety and choice

Although Bug Club books will appeal to all children, some stories have been written
and illustrated particularly with boys in mind. These stories are fast-paced with action,
adventure and humour to capture the interest and imagination of the boys.
Bug Club includes fantasy, traditional tales, adventure, realistic settings, mystery
and humour, as well as a whole host of non-fiction text types, to ensure that
the books will appeal to all children. The comics are provided to motivate and
engage all children who enjoy visual literacy and love a joke.

Design, illustration and photography

Bug Club books have been designed to make it easier for children to learn to
read, with careful thought given to text placement, font type and font size. The font
used in Bug Club books has been specially developed with clear characters and a
minimum amount of space between letters to help children to blend sounds and
decode words. Bug Club books are illustrated by leading children’s artists and
include a range of illustration styles so that they appeal to all children – from the
stop-frame animation stills of Timmy Time to the softer colours and comic style of
the Rat and Cat series. The non-fiction offering in Bug Club also includes a strand
of books from the award-winning publisher, Dorling Kindersley. Powerful and
engaging photographs help children to understand amazing facts and take them
on incredible journeys that will keep them motivated to read more.

Character clusters
Today’s children are surrounded by popular characters, from cinema and TV to
toys and computer games. Bug Club is the first reading programme to bring
these well-loved and popular characters into the classroom, enabling children to
follow the adventures of their favourite characters as they learn to read, ensuring
motivation remains high for success. Bug Club has also created new characters
with distinct and diverse personalities, which the children will enjoy meeting and
following through the programme.

5
 Including parents and carers
Feeling supported by parents and carers, as well as teachers, is essential for
keeping children’s motivation high. In order to help parents and carers, and to
encourage reading at home, the inside front covers of the Bug Club books include
tips on how to get the most out of reading together. These notes and tips for
parents have been written to support the reading behaviours that children should
be mastering at each Book Band level, so that the parent can support their child’s
development of key skills. Furthermore, Bug Club books provide fun activities and
discussion ideas on the inside back covers to ensure reading at home is not a chore
for child or adult.

Fine levelling
Bug Club books subdivide the Book Band levels to give children finer steps in
their reading progression, more variety of books at each level and a real sense
of accomplishment as they steadily progress through the levels. The fine levelling
fits perfectly with Reading Recovery levels, too. As the children work through the
fine levels you can also feel assured that they will be practising and consolidating
their phonic skills. Bug Club texts align with the phonic progression in Letters
and Sounds, so children can grow in confidence as they read Bug Club books
independently.

The online reading world

Bug Club’s online reading world can be accessed through ActiveLearn Primary. It
helps children to improve their reading skills at school and at home with exciting
books and rewards. With an online book available for every single printed Bug
Club book, children can access independent reading resources however they
want, whenever they want. The online reading world also enables teachers to
monitor every child’s progress, providing valuable evidence for assessment.

The online books

The Bug Club online books have the same wonderful illustrations and text as the
printed books, but they also contain quiz questions and a ‘Read to me’ function.
The quiz questions help to bring these books to life in a truly interactive and
thought-provoking way. The quiz questions encourage children to engage with
the text, to interpret meaning and to practise their decoding skills. The ‘Read to
me’ function encourages children to enjoy listening to the books, some of which
are narrated by well-known celebrities such as Michaela Strachan, Angellica Bell,
and Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes (known as TV presenting duo ‘Sam and Mark’).
The entertaining and energetic reading of these texts provides a good model for
reading aloud as well as helping to develop the children’s spoken language skills
as they grow their understanding of expression and oral literacy.

Engaging children
The online reading world of Bug Club is accessed through
ActiveLearn Primary. It has been designed to engage and
motivate children so that they get the most out of reading
each book and want to read more. Children will enjoy visiting
their own personalised Bug Club homepage where they can
read books that contain fun, interactive quizzes. A motivating
reward system means children gain points for completing the
quizzes and exchange points for electronic rewards. Children
can then view their rewards in an
interactive space.

6
Supporting teachers
The books within Bug Club’s online reading world provide the greatest flexibility for
the teaching of reading in school and the consolidation of that learning at home.
Bug Club online also provides an additional opportunity for gathering evidence
about each child’s progress and helps you to form a judgement across a range of
key skills. The quizzes that children complete as they enjoy each book are fed back
to you in the form of at-a-glance reports on their attainment so you can quickly
see how well they are progressing. The ‘Search’ feature allows you to find the right
book for each child based on Book Band or Phonics Phase. The books can also be
used for whole-class or group reading on interactive whiteboards, using audio and
annotation features.

Involving parents
Bug Club online is also an engaging and accessible way for parents and carers
to become involved and encourage reading practice at home, making a range of
supporting materials available.

Assessment
Assessment opportunities are fully integrated within Bug Club to ensure that you
can regularly see and interpret evidence about children’s reading to reveal where
they are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.
Bug Club supports early years’ practitioners as they constantly update their
observations about children’s readiness for reading and their early progress.
Informed judgements can be supported by the wide range of assessment
opportunities available to determine the skills that are secure and those that
need more rehearsal.
There are multiple ways in which day-to-day and periodic assessment is
embedded within Bug Club, from the photocopy masters that can be used to
collect evidence against a specific writing objective to the quiz questions within
the online world. The wide range of assessment opportunities within Bug Club
is designed to help you build up an accurate picture of where a child is in their
learning and to reveal any gaps, so that planning can be informed and next
steps easily identified.
The following resources within Bug Club provide tools for both placing a child at
the right reading level and monitoring their reading skills to help them progress.

A guided reading card is available for every Bug Club book.

Each guided reading card provides detailed support for a
lesson or sequence of lessons around Reading, Spoken
Language and Writing. The cards will help you to get the
most out of the guided reading sessions by homing in on
one objective for Reading, Spoken Language and Writing so
that you can collect focused evidence for assessment.

7
 The progression maps track key skill areas in reading
across a child’s years in primary school and are designed
to help you with ongoing formative assessment. They list
key objectives so you can see what is expected at different
stages in the school year. The key skills detailed on the
maps are linked to Book Bands, fitting perfectly alongside
Bug Club books. There is also a Word Reading and Fluency
progression map available to help you to track and assess
children’s progress in phonics, enabling you to identify
any problem areas quickly so you can target them in your
teaching sessions.

The online books contain quiz questions, each linked to skill

areas from the Pearson Primary reading progression map.
These can generate ready-made reports. These interactive,
fun activities cover a range of reading skills and help you to
monitor progress for every child in your class, at the click of a
button.

A phonic assessment worksheet is available for each of the

Pink and Red sub-Book-Bands. These worksheets enable
you to assess children’s ability to recognise graphemes and
to check that they can decode the phonemes within words.
The materials support summative assessment and they are
designed to be used at the end of each sub-Book-Band to
check children’s progress and also support ongoing, informal
assessment.

A photocopy master (PCM) is available for each book. This Look Up, Look Down!
Fiction
Pink A

worksheet seamlessly supports the Writing objective outlined Name:

Write what you can see in the picture.

on the guided reading card and can be used as evidence

Use the words.

dog cat rocket Zac

about how well a child is performing against the criteria. (EMW]

Date: ________________ Notes

Writing: The child can write all letters of the alphabet and
say the sounds they most commonly represent. (R, Spelling)
72
© Pearson Education 2016

The Progress and Assess reading tests, levelled against

Book Bands from Pink onwards and in harmony with the
progression maps, provide insight into whether children
have mastered key skills, and where children may be having
difficulty. Although you may choose to test children only
from Year 1 onwards, the Pink and Red tests provide an
opportunity to review what has been taught, and to plan
what needs to be addressed in future lessons.

8
Phonics Bug
Phonics Bug is a specialist synthetic phonic programme that is part of the Bug
Club family and perfectly complements the Bug Club books. Phonics Bug
contains everything you need to embed synthetic phonics into mainstream
reading with whole-class teaching software, 100% decodable readers, fun
phonics games and phonic assessment and support.

Phonics Bug reading books have been written to match the order of phonemes
introduced in Letters and Sounds. These books are designed to give children
the opportunity to practise their blending skills so that they can consolidate their
knowledge of grapheme–phoneme correspondences.
Bug Club books similarly match the phonic progression found in Letters and
Sounds, yet they also contain a small number of ‘context’ words. This is so that
the stories can be richer and more meaningful – and so that they can help
children develop the vital skill of comprehension.
Together the two series provide plenty of breadth and choice at each level to
make sure that all children get the opportunity to rehearse key phonic skills and
to choose books based on personal preference so that they truly enjoy reading.

9
 The Bug Club family
Bug Club offers a whole-school literacy solution, with resources for phonics, independent and guided reading,
grammar, spelling and punctuation. We also offer a range of Professional Development courses to help you get
the very best results from using these resources.

Bug Club for reading

Every book in the Bug Club family is available in print and online, and the combination of printed books, online
books and integrated assessment can help every child progress in their reading. Start with Phonics Bug for a
firm foundation in phonics, and then progress on to Bug Club books, which combine phonic progression with
a selection of context words to build reading stamina and engagement.

Professional Development
Our in-school courses are designed to inspire
you and give you all the information you need to
get the most out of every aspect of the Bug Club
family, so that your children develop skills and
make progress from the start.

Grammar and
Spelling Bug
Grammar and Spelling Bug offers hundreds
of engaging online practice games and tutorial
videos for independent use, which provide
instant feedback to help children master key
language skills. The games are underpinned
by flexible teaching guidance to introduce
each skill, and assessments to ensure you can
manage each child’s progression and plan their
next steps.

Bug Club Comprehension

Bug Club Comprehension uses a talk-based
approach to develop mastery of comprehension
skills. Its new print and online books and learning
g
resources provide everything you need to teach
comprehension strategies and gather written
evidence for formative assessment, with a focus
on rich and meaningful discussion of texts.

10
 Phonics Bug
Phonics Bug offers a complete synthetic phonics
programme aligned to Letters and Sounds, with online e
books, printed readers, assessment materials, whole-
class teaching software and classroom teaching
resources, including CBeebies videos. This collection
of materials can be used alongside Bug Club to help
develop a firm foundation in phonics that can be applieded
throughout a child’s reading.

Bug Club
Bug Club books can be used flexibly within your school:
• Independent reading: Books can be assigned to a
child online for independent reading at home or used
for one-to-one reading in school.
• Guided reading: Each book has an associated
guided reading card with thorough notes for running
a guided reading session. Each session is linked to
an assessment focus, covering reading, spoken language
and writing.
• Decodable comics: Spread from Pink to Blue book bands is a
set of 100% decodable comics aligned to Letters and Sounds.
The engaging design encourages independent reading skills,
and each comic is supported by teaching notes and online
quizzes that allow you to help children progress with decoding.
• Assessment: The online versions of the books offer self-
marking comprehension questions linked to assessment nt
focuses that feed information back to you, the teacher,
about how each child is progressing. A photocopy Meet the
master is available for each book to support the Author e
Nette Hilt
on
decid
1. What made you r?
to become a write
writing objective outlined on the guided reading card. My daughter, Emma
eight years old.
, quit school when
I thought it’d be
who hated schoo
she was only
fun to write a story
l. A friend sent
it to
about a little girl

Down!
Fiction
Pink A These resources provide tools for both placing a child a publis her, and they loved it!
pets as a child?
2. Did you have any pets. My childhood pets were
Look Up, Look
I have always had s

Name:
at the right reading level and monitoring their reading Timothy John, the
budgies (which
fox terrier, Yay,
Yay rather liked
the cat, and variou
as well!)
story?
the idea for this
in the picture. 3. How did you get
Write what you
Use the word
s.
can see
skills to help them progress up through the levels. I knew a boy who
moved away. It
was sad becau
seemed to me
how sometimes
se his friend had
I should write a
there’s nothing
story
else Find it!
Super similes!

• Parental involvement: Each book supports the

about boys and friend – it just
Zac is always a new There are lots of similes in
cat rocket to be but sad. There .
dog for them to arrive the story. For example, Itchi
takes a little time
posted to you?
looks like a lion (page 9).
like
4. Who would you Childs posted Can you find any others?
(EMW]
home-school link by providing supportive inside cover I would have Emily
to me. I just LOVE,
Gravatt and Lauren
LOVE, LOVE their
picture books!

notes with activities and advice for parents. Share it! 24/02/2012
Friendly snaps
hots
15:56

Next time you

play with your
y
friend, take
t k a camera
and take it in turns
to photograph
each other. Think
setting: will you carefully about
photograph your the
outside? Will you friend indoors
photograph any or
you’ve finished, pets as well? When
print the best photo
them to your friend graphs and give
as a souvenir.

____
Notes
Want to know more?
Date: ____________ and
the alphabet
all letters of
Writing: The
child can write represent. (R,
Spelling)
© Pearson Education
2016 More stories!
they most commonly
say the sounds
72 If you enjoyed this story, you might
like
to read The Quigleys Wild Life by Simon
Mason. This story is about a family
on
an outing to a wild life park.

CVR_CHPL_REA_Y3_
5811_IFC.indd
3

11
 A finely levelled reading
programme
Bug Club books are graded into colour-banded (Book Band) levels. Within each
level there is a carefully graded progression of books. This fine progression
gives children plenty of opportunity to develop their reading skills and master
each fine step while moving through the reading programme. Bug Club books
may be read in a progressive way following the order suggested by the book
bands. However, some children may not need to read every book in every level,
particularly if the books at that level are providing minimal challenge for them.
The books are written and levelled to encourage children to read independently
and to read for meaning.

Bug Club books for independent reading

The wide range of books at each Book Band level and sub-Book-Band level
allow each child to develop as a ‘reader’, making choices about the books
they enjoy reading. Books they are likely to be successful with as independent
readers will be slightly easier than those they can read with the support of an
experienced teacher or teaching assistant in guided reading sessions. Encourage
children to take home books that they will be able to read, or assign those books
electronically. This may well include books they have already read and enjoyed
with you in guided reading sessions.

Bug Club books for guided reading

Use your knowledge of the children and the information you have gathered
through Bug Club assessment to select appropriate books for guided reading.
In Reception (P1), a ‘guided group’ may be only two children, or it may be as
many as four or even six. Since children’s development is so varied at this stage,
the composition of a group may change from week to week. When you have
identified your group, consider what their developmental goals are in reading
and select a book that is at the cusp of their attainment. This will ensure that they
make appropriate progress and reading retains an element of safe challenge.

Characteristics of each level

Bug Club offers six finely graded levels for Reception (P1). At each level there are
fiction books and non-fiction books. In addition, there is a comic to encourage
visual literacy.

Lilac level
These are wordless books that tell a story through pictures alone. They are
particularly designed for children who come to school with little experience of
books, but they are also useful for all children to help them to develop spoken
language skills through creating and telling stories.
Each Lilac book is by a different author and illustrator and books at this level
include popular characters such as Trucktown, the Eco Apes and the friendly pair,
Daisy and Zac. Non-fiction titles at this level build on children’s prior knowledge
and encourage discussion around the high-quality photographs. The Lilac comic
can be used at any time in Reception (P1) to develop visual literacy, to develop
spoken language or just for fun.

12
Pink level
There are two sub-levels of Pink book that are discriminated by:
• a progression in the use of Phase 2 Letters and Sounds
sets
• a slightly increased number of words.
Pink A includes graphemes from the first four letter sets;
Pink B includes graphemes from all of the Phase 2 sets.
The Pink fiction books build on the characters introduced in the
Lilac books. This means that children are motivated to read the
book because they are already familiar with the characters and
interested in their adventures.

Red level
All levels in Bug Club consolidate learning from previous levels.
New learning in the three sub-levels of the Red books include:
• a progression in the use of Phase 3 and 4 Letters and
Sounds sets
• a slightly increased number of words
• an increase from eight to twelve pages
• slightly more complex story lines.
Red A introduces the consonant graphemes and digraphs from
Letters and Sounds Phase 3; the vowel digraphs are introduced in
Red B. Red C reinforces all of Phase 3 and also introduces Phase 4
words.
The growing complexity in the story lines is reinforced through the
development of inference and prediction using visual literacy. All of the books
introduce new sets of characters, which are revisited throughout the level.
Characters at this level include the adventurous young King Pip, the irrepressible
Rat and Cat as well as the eco-friendly Eco Apes.
Most children in Reception (P1) will start with the Lilac books, but you can use
Learning Journeys from pre-schools to indicate if children are ready to start at
a higher level. Each guided reading card indicates the key skills that children
can develop when using the book, so you can identify appropriate books for
individual children. In addition, the phonic assessment worksheets can be used
to check with which graphemes a child is already familiar. Revisit the relevant
worksheet at the end of each sub-Book-Band.
Bug Club books are ideal for use in Reading Recovery sessions as well as in
other early intervention programmes. The books in Pink and Red Book Bands
progress from Reading Recovery level 1 to Reading Recovery level 5. They have
been assessed and reviewed by a Reading Recovery professional. A suggested
Reading Recovery level can be found on the back cover of each book under the
sub-Book-Band level.
The texts within each colour band have been scrutinised by Book Bands for
Guided Reading authors and Reading Recovery professionals, Shirley Bickler and
Suzanne Baker. You can, therefore, have confidence in using the progression of
challenge to inform your selection of books for one child or a group.

13
 Bug Club character clusters
Bug Club fiction books are built around character clusters so that children can
enjoy reading further adventures in a series and meet their favourite characters
again and again. The books also include a diverse range of characters to ensure
that all children will find a particular cluster of books that they especially enjoy.
Bug Club keeps children’s motivation high by allowing children to get to know
the distinct and diverse personalities within the books. The children will soon
recognise the characters and develop an appreciation for and excitement about
the adventures contained within the pages.

Characters that children already love

Bug Club has teamed up with big names from the entertainment industry to
create stories that feature children’s favourite characters from TV – Shrek, Wallace
& Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Doctor Who, to name but a few. At Reception (P1)
level, these popular characters are:

Trucktown
Meet Ted, Pete and the other
trucks of Trucktown as they
interact in a comical way.
Children will enjoy picking out
their favourite truck character.

Sarah and Duck

Explore the world along with Sarah and
her best friend, Duck. As they solve life’s
problems together, Sarah and Duck
strengthen both their charming friendship
and their imagination!

Timmy
This cluster of stories is based on Aardman’s
popular animation, Timmy Time. Laugh along
with Timmy and his friends as they have fun and
get into scrapes on sports’ day, in the garden
and in the snow.

14
Bug Club characters
Bug Club also includes a range of characters specifically developed for the
reading programme. These characters ensure a variety of personalities and they
appear in range of stories from fantasy to realistic settings.

Daisy and Zac

Daisy and Zac are a young girl and boy
to whom children will easily relate as they
meet for the first time and become friends.

The Eco Apes

Bob, Dot and Ragbag will entertain children on their quest to save the
world by recycling, saving water and growing their own vegetables.

ob Ragba
B

g
Dot

Rat and Cat

This dynamic duo add pure fun and humourr
into the mix. Children will laugh out loud with
th
these adventures and will want to read on to o
see if Cat will ever catch Rat!

Cat
Cat is a mischievous and contrary pet who’s always
causing little problems! Children can have fun trying
to spot what Cat is doing until he and his owner are
reunited.

King Pip
King Pip lives in a fairy-tale world of wishing wells,
dragons, trolls and lonely monsters. Follow his
adventures through this magical land as he finds
friends in the most unlikely of places.

Each of these character clusters has its own mini-series of three books. As children
progress through the sub-Book-Bands, the level of challenge in each book slightly
increases. This is to help stretch children who have enjoyed the first book in a
series and want to read more of the same. The fine levelling and sub-division of
the Book Bands ensure that the step isn’t too great between each book.

15
 Bug Club and comics:
building visual literacy
by Peter Gutiérrez, Author and Bug Club Adviser

Most children love comics. They are seen as a reward – fun and motivating stories
that make reading enjoyable. However, children can and do learn through comics
even though in many cases they aren’t fully aware of it. To the untrained eye,
comics can appear to be extremely simple, if not simplistic, but it is exactly this
accessibility that makes them so inviting for children. Yet their popularity, as well
as their obvious potential to motivate reluctant readers, should not mask the rich
literacy opportunities that comics hold for all readers.
The unique elements of comics allow you to approach the reading objectives in
ways that are both fresh and deeply conceptual. Within one panel of a comic, for
example, you will find a wealth of elements:

• Speech bubbles (aka ‘balloons’) and thought

Help! bubbles: their varying sizes and shapes, along
with varying uses of text, often provide clues
to the emotional meaning of their content,
providing an easy pathway to more expressive
reading
p!
Ni
!
p
Ni

• Captions: tone, voice, point of view and changes

Mr Slime was there, too. in either time or place can be taught easily with
caption boxes

Zzzzz! • Sound effects: aside from teaching the

importance of appealing to the senses in writing,
sound effects can also reinforce children’s
developing phonic skills as they provide
opportunities to blend and segment ‘nonsense’
words that the children will never have seen
before

16
When several images are
considered together, the
following elements come
into play, each with its own
advantages in helping to
teach children to read:
• Panels: these fundamental
units of any comic story
can help teach basic
concepts in sequence to
beginner readers and
more complex issues
of narrative structure to
advanced readers
• White space: easy to overlook, the white space between the panels requires
readers constantly to make inferences; readers do this in part by creating a
mental image in order to make a connection between each panel, and thus
the comic provides practise for visualisation skills
• Page breaks and page ‘flips’: pausing at page breaks is a powerful way to
help readers learn how to summarise information and to make predictions
– two crucial comprehension strategies; print texts such as novels and short
stories have page breaks, too, but they are not built into the structure of the
story in the way that comics (and picture books) must incorporate them into
the storytelling
These elements make a very effective learning tool for the visual learner that
resides in all children. The teaching of visual literacy is a vital part of any
curriculum. Here, the instructional focus is on the ‘grammar’ of visual media – the
communicative and artistic devices that comics share not only with movies and
television, but also painting, photography, graphic design and other multi-media
texts such as web pages. In short, comics provide a child-friendly way to learn
about:
• Composition: children can come to understand that images are not just
drawn, but constructed; artists must consider where to place items in relation
to each other, as well as issues such as proximity (e.g. close-ups) and angle of
view
• Colour and light: how does a colour palette enhance a given mood or
underscore story themes, and how do shadow and contrast work towards
these same goals?
• Typography: comics often include highly creative and expressive aspects of
lettering itself, for example, within speech bubbles, labels and expressive text
• Design: apart from how an individual image is composed, might several
images and text be arranged in order to maximise both the communication of
information and aesthetic pleasure?
• Signs and symbols: cultural symbols such as a lightbulb representing an idea
or inspiration are an integral part of the comic’s visual shorthand
Finally, it should be noted that none of the above advantages work magically for
all children with all comics without some explicit instruction. That’s why Bug Club
offers a guided reading card to accompany every comic. By providing the tools
you need to connect comics powerfully to literacy objectives, Bug Club allows
you to continue teaching – while the children simply feel that they’re continuing to
have fun.

17
18
Phonics Bug components chart
 Bug Club KS1 components chart

19
 Making links across the
curriculum
The literacy skills that Bug Club targets and develops will underpin all other areas
of learning in the classroom and the wider world. Bug Club books offer a wide
range of topics and themes that will provide many opportunities for children to
make links between different areas of learning, thus enriching their experience
and embedding concepts and knowledge.
To capture children’s interest, stimulate their curiosity and secure their engagement
with books and enjoyment of reading, it will help to be alert to the opportunities
that the books present for making links with other curriculum areas. The examples
in the grids below illustrate some possibilities, but you will find that a wealth of
opportunities to make further meaningful links with the wider curriculum emerge
through the children’s interests. Encourage the children to make such links for
themselves, too, building their ability to deepen their own understanding by
synthesising different areas of their knowledge and experience.
You can support children to broaden their frames of reference by modelling how
to make links, referring back to other books and learning you have shared, and
encouraging them to apply their learning in a wide range of contexts. A readiness
to draw on prior knowledge and relate information in different contexts will
reinforce children’s learning skills and enhance their ability both to access the
wider curriculum successfully and to engage with the wider world effectively.

Area of learning Early learning goal Example link with Bug Club and
suggested activity
Communication Listening and attention: Children […] Night to Day (Lilac)
and language give their attention to what others
say and respond appropriately, while Ask each child to draw or colour a
engaged in another activity. picture of their favourite animal and tell a
partner about their animal as they do so.
(ELG 01) Encourage sustained concentration and
simultaneous, purposeful conversation.
Understanding: Children follow I Want to Play This! (Lilac)
instructions involving several ideas or
actions. They answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ Provide materials for a simple game (e.g.
questions […]. skittles or hoopla). Give children simple
verbal instructions about setting up and
(ELG 02) playing the game. Ask ‘how’ and ‘why’
questions (e.g. Why do you have to stand
behind the line? How could you make it
easier/harder?).
Speaking: Children […] use past, present What Is In My Net? (Pink B)
and future forms accurately when talking
about events that have happened or are Plan a mini-beast safari around your
to happen in the future […]. school grounds. Ask children to predict
where they will go, what they will do
(ELG 03) and what they will see. Afterwards, ask
children to report what they found.
Health and self-care: Children know the Fun at the Beach (Lilac)
importance for good health of physical
exercise and a healthy diet, and talk Ask children to draw things they need to
about ways to keep healthy and safe. stay safe in the sun (e.g. sun cream, water,
They manage their own basic hygiene a hat and/or a shady place to play).
and personal needs successfully, Be a Pirate (Red B)
including dressing and going to the toilet
independently. Provide dressing-up clothes with various
fasteners (e.g. buttons, zips and press-
(ELG 05) studs) for children to practise doing up
and undoing. Some children could have
a race to put on a complete costume
independently.

20
Personal, social Self-confidence and self-awareness: Sport is Fun (Red B)
and emotional Children are confident to try new
development activities, and to say why they like some Encourage children to have a go at a
activities more than others. They are new activity they have never tried before
confident to speak in a familiar group, (e.g. skipping, hopscotch, skittles, hula-
will talk about their ideas, and will choose hooping or leapfrog).
the resources they need for their chosen Look at Lego City (Pink B)
activities. They say when they do or do
not need help. Ask children to think about constructing
a model from building blocks, prompting
(ELG 06) them to say what they will make and
what they will need before they begin.
Encourage them to anticipate and say
whether they will need help.
Managing feelings and behaviour: Rat and Cat: The Dance (Red B)
Children talk about how they and others
show feelings, talk about their own and Find examples of facial expressions in
others’ behaviour, and its consequences this and a range of books. Make links
[…]. between facial expressions and the
feelings they express. Discuss the feelings
(ELG 07) children have experienced.
Shape, space and measures: Children Tyres for Ted (Lilac)
use everyday language to talk about
size, weight, capacity, position, distance, Discuss the shape of tyres and related
time and money to compare quantities words (e.g. ‘circle’, ‘circular’ and ‘round’).
and objects and to solve problems. Ask questions about these shapes and
They recognise, create and describe terms (e.g. What other truck features are
patterns. They explore characteristics of circular? What shapes are used for road
everyday objects and shapes and use signs?).
mathematical language to describe
them.
(ELG 12)
The world: Children know about Night to Day (Lilac)
similarities and differences in relation
to places, objects, materials and living Talk about different environments and
things. They talk about the features of the birds and animals that live in them.
their own immediate environment and Ask children to make models of birds and
how environments might vary from animals in their habitats.
one another. They make observations
of animals and plants and explain
why some things occur, and talk about
changes.
(ELG 14)
Expressive arts Exploring and using media and Make an Egg Card (Red C)
and design materials: Children sing songs, make
music and dance, and experiment with Make a collection of tools that children
ways of changing them. They safely use can use during art and craft activities. Ask
and explore a variety of materials, tools them to make samples to demonstrate
and techniques, experimenting with what each tool can do.
colour, design, texture, form and function.
(ELG 16)

21
 Reading at home with
Bug Club
Inside every book
Inside every Bug Club book, you will find ‘Bug Notes’ to help parents and carers
create a strong reading environment, with guiding notes and fun activities for
children to do.
It is well documented that encouragement in reading from parents and carers
plays a vital role in children’s development as readers so Bug Club has specially
created inside front and back covers to help guide the parent and carer, engage
the child and foster a love of reading.

Notes for the parent and carer

The ‘Bug Notes’ are finely levelled for each Book Band level and progress in focus
along with the books. The notes contain tips for reading with the child, as well as
suggested activities to encourage children’s developing literacy.

Every book provides Any words that appear The sounds that are covered in
suggestions for how to create frequently are clearly each book are drawn out with
a good reading environment shown. pronunciation guidance for the
and culture at home. parent or carer.

Suggested activities provide Words that children Activities to develop children’s

opportunities to practise the may need help reading fluency and expression,
words or sounds that appear or understanding are understanding and prediction
in each book. pulled out. skills are provided in each book.

22
 Notes for the child
On the inside back cover of every book, there are fun activities for the children
to do called ‘Bug Time’. The activities and language are written especially for the
child, though in the lower levels they will need support to read these.
There are two main activities for each book: information-finding tasks and
creative tasks based on themes from the book. The information-finding task asks
children to find, spot or count items in the book. The creative task asks children to
‘Make it!’, ’Do it!’, Try it!’ or ‘Draw it!’. This could be anything from acting like one
of the characters to drawing a picture.
Each activity has been carefully chosen to stimulate the child’s imagination, help
consolidate what they have encountered in the book and, most importantly,
make reading time a fun and memorable experience.

Fun counting tasks get There is a variety of creative Answers are given
children to look back tasks to stimulate the to support the tasks
through the books. children’s imaginations, where necessary.
spread across the books.

23
 Access Bug Club’s online reading world at home
Bug Club’s online reading world helps children improve core reading skills
at school or home with exciting texts and fun rewards. Bug Club enables
independent practice on any computer and selected tablets that have an internet
connection. A child can log in to his or her personalised reading homepage and
access books for further reading practice.

Children can choose

the appearance of their
homepage.

Multiple books can be

allocated to a child at
one time.

Support for children

Within the Bug Club books, a child can read the text onscreen. There is also an
audio recording of each book as all children enjoy listening to stories. Listening to
books that they have read themselves gives children an increased pride in their
achievements as well as providing a model of fluent and interesting reading. Less
confident children may benefit from listening to the audio recording before they
try to read the book independently.

24
 Books with quiz questions
Every book has the added bonus of interactive quiz questions embedded within
the book pages. By clicking on Bug Club hotspots, children can answer quiz
questions that are short, engaging and targeted at specific reading skills. Some
quiz questions are open questions, which aim to elicit a child’s preference to or
thoughts around a text, while others refer directly to the text and require the use
of comprehension skills to answer the questions.

Support for parents and carers

Parents will enjoy seeing their children make progress and being motivated to
read. They will gain a greater clarity about which reading level their child is at, as
well as accessing tips for supporting their child. In addition, children can access
up to five books so there is always choice and variety. Bug Club online also
allows children to revisit their favourite books.
Parents may opt to allow their children to work independently to read the book
and complete the quiz questions. However, both child and parent will gain more
from a shared experience where the parent listens to their child reading the book
aloud. Thereafter, the child may re-read the book and complete the activities
independently.

Children can see how many books they have Children can collect points by completing the
read and revisit each one if they choose. quiz questions. They can use these to collect
rewards and, all the while, they’ll be learning
to read.

25
 Bug Club decodable comics
Using the teaching cards
Each Bug Club decodable comic has a linked teaching card, available to download
from ActiveLearn Primary. These teaching cards are a flexible resource designed to
support teachers and teaching assistants as they guide groups of readers through
individual titles, and are carefully targeted to support children’s ability levels.
For each book, the teaching card highlights opportunities for children to:
• revise, practise and reinforce their phonic knowledge, helping them to read with
increasing fluency and enjoyment;
• increase their familiarity with tricky but commonly used words;
• practise their spoken language skills;
• improve their ability to read for meaning and not just to decode text;
• approach new books with confidence, learning how to interpret book features
such as the title, cover illustrations and blurb;
• recognise the basic conventions of grammar and punctuation in written text;
• enjoy a lively, engaging story, which can be used as a springboard for further
creative activities linking to the wider curriculum.
All the teaching cards provide ample material to cover one book in a group
session, lasting between 20 and 30 minutes. Some of the longer, higher-level
books could be covered over two sessions, but teachers can tailor the sessions to
match the ability and concentration level of any particular group of children.

The teaching cards’ structure

The teaching cards all follow the same basic structure, although cards for the
earliest, wordless books differ slightly. These focus more on developing phonemic
awareness and appreciation of basic story conventions.

Link to the stage of phonic Title, author and illustrator for

learning teaching reference

A brief outline of the content of Support for reading specific

the story, for teaching reference words, opportunities for
discussion, ways to check
comprehension and
Key phonemes and graphemes
understanding of grammar and
covered in this text, closely
punctuation, and opportunities
reflecting the structure of Letters
to check that children adopt a
and Sounds (the // marks
‘phonics first’ approach
indicate the phoneme, rather
(i.e. using sound effects)
than the grapheme)

Advice on blending phonemes in

Advice on segmenting order to read words
phonemes in specific words

A focus on the commonly used

but tricky words in the text

Suggestions for additional

Suggestions for introducing the activities such as role-play,
book drama or further discussion

26
Supporting phonics attainment with Bug Club comics: Phase 1

Letters and Sounds Classroom activities How parents

Phase can help

The focus of Phase 1 is to tune Phase 1 decodable Bug Club titles Many parents find wordless
the children’s ears into listening. feature simple stories for children books quite stressful: they
Many young children haven’t to retell. Hearing the stories told don’t know what to do with
yet developed the listening by adults will extend the children’s them. The inside front cover of
mechanism that helps them to vocabulary and their understanding every Phase 1 wordless Bug
identify to what to pay attention of how stories work. Club book contains detailed
and what to ignore. As they notes that parents and carers
experience and enjoy activities can refer to in order to ‘read’
for each aspect of Phase 1, At the very early stages, children the comic with their child.
children gradually develop an often talk about events in each Once parents understand the
awareness of language, words picture, but don’t link the pictures purpose of these titles, they will
and sounds. together. Comics are an ideal way be more confident in supporting
of developing their understanding of their children and encouraging
a story comprised of a sequence of the children to retell or to create
By the end of Phase 1, children events. their own stories about the
have acquired the vocabulary pictures.
needed to learn phonics. They
may also start to be able to During Phase 1, children need to listen
Why not create class challenges
segment (split) a spoken word to sounds and play with rhythm and
for home learning? Each week,
into its individual phonemes rhyme. Exploring sounds through
identify a feature of sound (e.g.
and to blend individual classroom music ideas, through
long, loud, squeaky, rustling) or
phonemes into a whole spoken sensory experiences and through
where the sound comes from
word. listening walks, etc. all help to
(e.g. high up in the sky, down
sharpen children’s awareness of links
near the ground, a bird, an
between sounds and objects while
animal, a person) and ask all of
Most children will still need to they develop vocabulary for talking
the children and parents to talk
work within the latter stages of about sounds being loud and soft,
about all of the things they hear
Phase 1 even after they have long and short and so on.
in the week that are that kind of
begun to recognise phonemes
sound.
in Phase 2.
There is a lot of specialist vocabulary
involved in the teaching and learning
Ask your parents to teach the
of phonics. Terms like sound, word
children poems and rhymes.
and rhyme are hard enough. Add
If you have EAL children, ask
in concepts like the sound at the
their parents to teach them
beginning of the word; the next
poems and rhymes in their
sound in the word; the sound you
first language as well as in
hear at the end of the word and
English. Perhaps some parents
a lesson can become difficult for
will come and teach all of your
children to understand. Line up
children a new rhyme.
children or toy farm animals to verify
understanding of the language of
order and ordinal numbers; ask
children to use counters to show you
how many words there are in a short
phrase or caption (a black cat; the
cow; the big, black cat, etc); use long
hissing sounds and tongue twisters
to help children to identify individual
sounds in spoken language.

27
 Supporting phonics attainment with Bug Club comics: Phase 2

Letters and Sounds Classroom activities How parents

Phase can help

During Phase 2, children begin Introduce the graphemes at a Parents need to know and
to link abstract written symbols fast pace, but remember to keep understand what you’re
to oral sounds. By the time they on revisiting what was previously teaching the children. A quick
finish Phase 2, they will be able learned. As soon as children are talk to a group of parents can
to recognise 23 graphemes and familiar with eight grapheme- save a lot of time.
link them to phonemes. phoneme correspondences, begin
to develop activities for blending
and segmenting. If children have Once parents are on board
Phase 2 is also the beginning worked through Phase 1, they will be with saying the phonemes, and
of reading. As soon as children used to doing these activities orally. they understand how to blend
can say the right phonemes All you need to do now is to link the and segment simple words,
for 4 or 5 letters and can blend graphemes to the phonemes. they can be very supportive in
the sounds together, they can helping to build confidence and
begin to read words. Add in competence in phonics.
a few common ‘tricky’ words As children begin to decode words,
and children can read simple always expect that they will say the
captions and sentences. complete word when they have said At this stage, decodable texts
the phonemes. Model reading for are ideal because children can
them, so they can see that they don’t practise their phonic skills. Why
Towards the end of Phase 2, have to sound out a word each time not send home little pouches of
children will be able to decode if they can read it straight away. plastic or paper letters so that
and make meaning from simple parents can help their children
texts. to make some of the words in
When teaching ‘tricky’ words, point their reading books using the
out the part of the word that is tricky letters? This early link between
and encourage children to blend the reading and writing will stand
rest. the children in good stead as
they develop their literacy skills.

Encourage parents to keep the

phonemes pure when saying
them with children, for example
saying ‘mmm’ rather than
‘muh’.

28
Supporting phonics attainment with Bug Club comics: Phase 3

Letters and Sounds Classroom activities How parents

Phase can help

The key learning in Phase 3 is Many children get bogged down As children progress through
that two letters in a digraph (or in Phase 3 because they learn to Phase 3, and the number of
three in a trigraph) can be used recognise the digraphs/trigraphs words they can read grows, they
to represent a completely new in isolation but can’t read them in begin to progress to texts that
phoneme, e.g. /sh/, /ai/, /ow/, words. From the very start, make are more complex. These are
/air/. sure they see these letter patterns in often more satisfying to parents.
words. It may help at the beginning
to show the digraphs/trigraphs in
During Phase 3, the children a different colour, but gradually Before you send home texts
learn another 12 ‘tricky’ words, the children need to learn to scan containing known Phase 3
making a total of 18. It is worth forwards in a word they are reading digraphs/trigraphs, send home
noting that high-frequency in order to look for linked letters. some little games to familiarise
words that are decodable are the parents with the digraphs/
not ‘tricky’ and shouldn’t present trigraphs and their sounds. A
children with any additional During Phase 3, regional accent simple sound lotto game is easy
challenge. will play a more significant part in to prepare: a few flashcards
the effectiveness of your phonics showing the digraphs/trigraphs
teaching, because the long vowels in together with cards showing
By the time they have particular vary so significantly around words and pictures.
completed Phase 3, children will the country. Be sensitive to your
know one way of representing children’s accents and make sure
all of the 44 phonemes in the that they link sounds in their own Also send home a bookmark
English language. accent with the letter patterns you with your ‘script’ on it so that
are teaching. parents can use the same
language that you do when
teaching children to scan ahead
In Phase 3, ‘tricky’ words become for any other linked letters and to
more prominent. Teach children to work out tricky or unrecognised
‘use what they know’ when they words.
meet a ‘tricky’ word. Of course,
to a child, any word they can’t
immediately decode or recognise Once parents recognise the
is a ‘tricky’ word, but they should digraphs/trigraphs and know
be encouraged to do their best to the ‘script’, they are generally
decode these words. very happy to support children in
reading the new, fuller texts.

Many children continue to

benefit from flashcard games
in which they recognise tricky
words and words containing
Phase 3 digraphs/trigraphs.
Encourage parents to play
sorting games (How quickly can
you find all of the words with /
ar/?), snap, memory games, etc.
with the flashcards rather than
simply presenting them to the
child to bark at.

29
 Assessing progress in reading
Assessment overview
A comprehensive suite of assessment tools is available to help you and your pupils
make the most of Bug Club.
Online quizzes
Every Bug Club book includes interactive quiz questions. Spanning a range of question
types, these online quizzes produce clear data for each child, linked to the relevant
Reading Progression Map. Teachers can view results at individual or group level.
Where?
• Bug Club books can be viewed online within the Bug Club area of ActiveLearn
Primary.
Guided reading
Guided Reading Cards are available for each title in Bug Club. Each Guided Reading Card
outlines a series of structured guided reading sessions with tightly focused assessment
criteria linked to the objectives in the relevant Reading Progression Map and the National
Curriculum, to help you to gather evidence of understanding in key areas.
Where?
• Printed, durable Guided Reading Cards can be bought separately.
• Alternatively, Guided Reading Cards can be found online in ActiveLearn Primary.
Reading progression maps
Reading Progression Maps provide a detailed framework that will help you to
understand what is expected of pupils in six key skill areas: Literal Comprehension,
Inference, Themes and Conventions, Responding to the Text, Language for Effect, and
Word Reading and Fluency. The maps are designed to help you with ongoing formative
assessment, listing key objectives so you can see what is expected at different stages in
each school year. The National Curriculum for England objectives are highlighted to help
you to understand how skills build up to the end-of-year objectives.
Where?
• A more detailed introduction to the Reading Progression Maps can be found below.
• The maps can be downloaded from the Resources area of ActiveLearn Primary,
alongside your Bug Club books.
Progress and Assess tests
Progress and Assess provides half-termly tests by Book Band from Pink onwards, so
that each child can take the test appropriate to their current reading level. Although
you may choose to test children only from Year 1 onwards, the comprehensive marking
guidance shows you how each question relates to the National Curriculum objectives,
and to the skill areas from the relevant Progression Map, to help you identify areas of
strength and weakness.
Where?
• Printed, full-colour tests and assessment guides with all the resources you need for
each year group can be bought separately.
• Alternatively, black-and-white Progress & Assess tests, marking guidance and
resources can be found online within the Bug Club area of ActiveLearn Primary.
Progress and Assess reporting tools
Once you have marked your tests, inputting the test results into the tracking tools on
ActiveLearn Primary allows you to generate reports on how children are performing
against age-related expectations, as well as how they’re progressing. Reports can be
exported or printed, and are available at individual, group, class or cohort level.
Where?
• You can input test results and generate reports in the assessment area of
ActiveLearn Primary.

30
Online assessment
Quiz questions link to a range of learning objectives
The interactive quiz questions in every Bug Club online book cover a range of
question types and key skills. Some books contain word-recognition questions,
but the majority of the activities encourage a child to read for meaning through
a focus on language comprehension (literal or inferential) and through open
questions about the children’s thoughts and reactions to the text. There are
between three and nine quiz questions in each Bug Club book, depending on
the text level. Unless an activity is open, for personal response, children have
three attempts to answer each quiz question, allowing them to recognise and
correct errors. The quiz questions link to our Reading Progression Maps, so you
can gain further evidence about a child’s reading skills and build up a picture of
that child’s strengths and weaknesses.
Data represented in ready-made reports
The scoring of these quiz questions feeds through to the teacher homepage in
the Bug Club area of ActiveLearn Primary, so you can see easily how each child
is doing in their independent reading tasks.
• A correct first attempt carries the top score for the child (4 points) and
feeds through to you as green in the traffic-lighting system on the reports,
representing strength in the question’s skill area.
• A correct second attempt (3 points) and a correct third attempt (2 points) feed
through to you as amber, and represent some strength in the question’s skill
area.
• An incorrect answer after three attempts still carries 1 point (to encourage
children to attempt the quizzes) but feeds through to you as red. This
represents weakness in the question’s skill area.
By looking at the reports in the Bug Club area of ActiveLearn Primary, you can
see how many quiz questions each child has attempted, as well as their progress
against each question type.
Other key features
• Using the snap-shot view provides an overview for every child in your class,
showing who has and has not completed their quiz questions, and with what
success.
• You can view an individual child’s complete reading history at any time.
• Exporting a customisable report, ideal for parent-teacher evenings, gives an
overview of usage and attainment in a time-period of your choosing.
Where next?
The assessment data feeding from the child’s completed quiz questions can be
used to support other evidence of a child’s reading progress. Because the data
is provided easily for every child in your class, you can use this to personalise
next steps: for example, allocating a higher-level book to a child who is ready
to progress, or allocating a book that links to a particular learning objective to
consolidate a child’s skills in an area seen to need improvement.

31
 Guided reading
Guided reading lessons work best when the teacher is familiar with the text and
has a clear focus. Bug Club guided reading cards are designed to save you hours
of planning and preparation time. There is a guided reading card for every book,
which helps you plan and run a focused guided reading session. Bug Club guided
reading cards provide an ideal context in which to assess pupils’ progress towards
three main objectives: Reading, Spoken Language and Writing. These objectives
should be appropriate for all children in the group and be at the cutting edge of
each child’s learning.
Each guided reading card contains two sessions. The two sessions are
complementary and are designed to help the teacher gain a range of evidence
about each child’s progress; however, they can be conducted on the same day or
on different days, depending on the amount of time available.
• Session 1 Reading contains everything you need for a focused guided reading
session. This includes a ‘Walkthrough’ that helps to prepare children to read
the book, a focused ‘Main Question’ that links to the main Reading objective
outlined on the front cover, and an ‘After Reading’ section that helps you gather
evidence from each child and see how well they are progressing towards the
main Reading objective.

• Session 2 Spoken Language & Writing

focuses specifically on spoken language
and writing and is designed to gather
evidence against these main objectives,
which again are outlined on the front
cover of the guided reading card.

32
 A plot summary enables you
to remind yourself of the story
quickly. It is useful to read the Key information is available at
plot summary to the children so the top of each guided reading
that they understand significant card to enable you to assess
aspects of the story before they quickly whether the book is at
read independently within the the appropriate level for the
session. guided reading group.

Curriculum references enable

you to track progress against the
National Curriculum for England
2014. Links to the Scotland (CfE),
Wales (W) and Northern Ireland
(NI) curricula are also provided.
More detail can be found on
the available curriculum linking
charts for Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland.

A photocopy
It is important to have clear master is available
teaching objectives for a guided to support the
reading lesson. The objectives Writing objective
for Reading, Spoken Language and to help you
and Writing are clearly outlined gather evidence for
to enable you to see the main assessment.
focus of the lesson quickly. The
Reading objective is supported
by the main question and all
supplementary questions in
the ‘During Reading’ and ‘After
Reading’ sections. The Spoken
Language and Writing objectives
are drawn out in Session 2 of
the guided reading card. All
questions on the guided reading
card are designed to help you to
gather evidence to assess each
child’s progress in the objectives
outlined here.

A key is provided to help Reading, Spoken Language

you understand any and Writing objectives that are
abbreviations quickly. featured on the progression
maps are given so that you can
see towards which assessment
criteria children are working.

33
 Session 1 starts off with a
dedicated ‘Phonics for Reading’
session, included so that
the children can rehearse
graphemes and phonemes Encourage children to say each
found in the book, and at that grapheme to prepare them for
phase, before reading. reading.

Encourage children to blend

the words containing the
graphemes. Graphemes
represented by more than
one letter are underlined
so children can get used to
reading these as single units.
The dots indicate single letter
sounds. Children should blend
these words in preparation for
reading the text.

Bug Club books contain a few

context words that children
may require help to read. These
words are included so the
stories can be richer and more
meaningful – and so the text
can help children develop the
vital skill of comprehension.

The ‘Walkthrough’ prepares each

child for an independent reading of
the text. It is designed to unlock the
text for the children prior to reading
so that, when they come to read
it themselves, they can do so with
minimal support.

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The ‘Main question’ in the
guided reading session links
back to the main objective for
Reading, outlined on the front
page of the guided reading
card. The ‘Main question’ should
be read aloud and children
should be asked to consider the
answer as they read through the
story. Additional prompts are
given to help you sample the
children’s reading as they each
read independently.

‘After Reading’ is a key time to

note any evidence about each
child’s reading progress against
the main objective, as they
answer the ‘Main question’ that
was asked at the start of the
lesson.

35
 This section prepares children for
the Writing activity by practising
letter formation and spelling. In
some instances, you may require
materials or prompts to help you
carry out the activity, so you will
Session 2 helps to gather evidence
want to read this through before
for the Spoken Language and
conducting it with the children.
Writing objectives.

The Spoken Language activity

supports the objective outlined
on the front cover of the teaching
card. It also prepares the
children to work independently
on the Writing photocopy master
(PCM).

The Writing activity supports the

Writing objective as outlined on
the front cover of the teaching
card. It also follows on from the
Spoken Language session and
refers to the photocopy master
(PCM) available for each book.

This section gives ideas for

making links from the books into
extension activities.

The guided reading cards for the comics differ slightly, in terms of content
and layout, from the guided reading cards designed to support the fiction
and non-fiction Bug Club books. This difference is to highlight the visual
literacy opportunities that the comics provide by including a dedicated
‘Visual Literacy’ box that runs alongside the ‘Before Reading’ and ‘During
Reading’ sections. The Writing activity in Session 2 of each comic’s guided
reading card also includes more detailed support for guided writing.

36
Progression maps
Assessment is, of course, essential and it is something that teachers do
instinctively on a day-to-day basis. Because of this, assessment comes in
different forms and guises. Much assessment is ongoing and formative as it
stems from observations and informs ongoing teaching and learning in the
classroom.
The progression maps track key skill areas in reading across a child’s years
in primary school and are designed to help you with ongoing formative
assessment. They list key objectives so you can see what is expected at different
stages in the school year. The progression maps are also linked to Book Bands
and so fit perfectly alongside Bug Club books.
There is a reading progression map available to download for each of the
sub-Book Bands that align to National Curriculum expectations, and also a Word
Reading and Fluency progression map to help you to track and assess children’s
progress in phonics, enabling you to identify any problem areas quickly so you
can target them in your teaching sessions. Children who are consistently meeting
the objectives in the progression maps during their everyday work are likely to
be on track to reach their age-related expectations in reading by the end of
primary school.
The maps are broken down into skill areas and strands within them so teachers
can quickly find the objectives for which they are looking. These skill areas break
down the curriculum into manageable steps.
• Any objectives in bold have been taken directly from the 2014 National
Curriculum for England.
• Any text not in bold represents a smaller step that helps children to build the
required skills they need by the end of the year, and helps you to check their
progress along the way.
• Each skill is followed by an example to help give you a clear idea of how that
skill should look in the classroom at that stage in a child’s progress, to help you
assess whether a child has achieved the objective.
You may wish to keep a copy of the reading progression map for each child in
your assessment folder. We suggest that, each time you have a guided reading
session with a group, you refer to the progression map for suggested skills focuses
and make notes on how children are progressing. We provide a box within each
outcome cell to help you do this. You may want to insert a tick, cross or circle to
indicate when an outcome has been achieved. The updated Bug Club guided
reading cards will help you assess the skills listed in the progression maps.
We recommend that you assess children using the progression map that is
right for the individual child, so children who are not yet able to work towards
the objectives for their year group should be assessed using the map that
corresponds to the Book Band at which they are working. You can also use the
progression map for the child’s year group to help you to assess which skills the
child needs to develop in order to get back on track. In guided reading sessions
grouped by ability, use the progression map that is most appropriate to each
group’s Book Band to inform your formative assessment.
Guided reading is the ideal opportunity for assessing reading progress using
the progression maps because children are usually in groups organised by
ability, and because the format of a guided reading session facilitates flexibility
and allows your instincts and knowledge about children’s abilities to guide the
assessment process.

37
 Phonic assessment worksheets
The Bug Club books will play an important role in providing information about
children’s learning. Through simple observation, it will be possible to judge how
well a child is able to transfer their learning from their phonic lessons to their
independent reading. For example, you can judge how well a child is able to
blend phonemes when reading Bug Club books. You may wish to keep brief
notes about a child’s reading behaviour and record this information in a reading
diary or something similar so that this information can also feed back into
subsequent teaching sessions.
As children progress through the books, they will be rehearsing and applying
their phonic skills and building up their knowledge of common words that they
can read on sight. It is, therefore, useful to monitor children’s developing phonic
and high-frequency (common) word knowledge to assess where they are in their
learning, to identify gaps in their understanding and to plan the next steps to
help them acquire this knowledge. The phonic assessment worksheets on pages
56–57 of this guide are for use at the end of each sub-Book-Band to help you
assess each child’s progress.
To use this worksheet, photocopy it twice, give one copy to the child and retain
the other copy. The child should read from their copy while you use the second
copy to record responses.

The sub-Book-Band level, The words listed here are from the Bug Club books
Phase and Phonics Bug at each sub-book-Band level. These words rehearse
units are outlined at the some of the key graphemes and phonemes that
top for quick reference. children should learn at each level.

The words listed here are high-frequency The words listed here are
(common) words that the children need high-frequency (common)
to learn how to read on sight at this level words that children should be
as they are not phonically regular. able to decode at this level.

38
Phonic assessment worksheet Pink

Pupil name:

Pink A: Phase 2, Phonics Bug Units 1–4 Date:

box ship yes yuck

High-frequency decodable words and am at
can it not
High-frequency tricky words I go the

Pink B: Phase 2, Phonics Bug Units 1–5 Date:

bag bin bug fan

fun hot lot net sun
High-frequency decodable words get got in up
High-frequency tricky words to

39
© Pearson Education 2016
 Phonic assessment worksheet Red

Pupil name:

Red A: Phase 3, Phonics Bug Units 6–8 Date:

box ship yes yuck

High-frequency decodable words that this will with
High-frequency tricky words be me they you was

Red B: Phase 3, Phonics Bug Units 6–9 Date:

book coat cool long need pool

rain soon thing
High-frequency decodable words look see then too
High-frequency tricky words are he my she we

Red C: Phase 4, Phonics Bug Units 6–12 Date:

card flip flower for jump now

popcorn soil string under
High-frequency decodable words help went
High-frequency tricky words do like little out said
some
40
© Pearson Education 2016
 Bug Club photocopy masters
(PCMs)
Bug Club offers a wealth of support materials for each book, including photocopy
masters (PCMs). The PCMs have been carefully designed to offer written
assessment opportunities as well as fun activities for the children to complete.
They are finely levelled to match each Book Band, incorporating tasks and
Assessment Focuses suitable for children at each specific level. The PCMs can be
used in conjunction with the guided reading cards or as stand-alone activities,
and offer a chance to collect detailed written assessment for each child.

Non-fiction
There is one PCM for Fun at the Beach Lilac
The type of book and
each book. Book Band level are
Name:
clearly shown.

At Lilac level, the

instruction appears in
the grey ‘teacher area’
at the bottom of the
At Lilac level, the Ask the children to draw themselves playing ball with the girl on the beach.
page.
Assessment Focus is Date: ________________ Notes

Writing: Consistently assigns meaning to marks they have

always on mark-making. 70
made. (R, Grammar and Vocabulary for Impact)

© Pearson Education 2016

Fiction
Look Up, Look Down! Pink A
After Lilac level, the
instruction appears at
Name:
the top of the page and
Write what you can see in the picture. is written for the child.
Use the words.

dog cat rocket Zac

Support is offered to
help children complete
(EMW]
the tasks where
necessary. Images from the books
are incorporated into
many of the tasks.

Simple icons give

children the chance A Writing objective from
to show how happy the Pearson Primary
they are with their Date: ________________ Notes
writing progression
Writing: The child can write all letters of the alphabet and

completed PCM. 72
say the sounds they most commonly represent. (R, Spelling)

© Pearson Education 2016 map is always flagged.

41