Learning to read at home

Piper Books are carefully structured to ensure that all children can learn to read from the very first story. The early tales are gentle, appealing and humorous and children relish the little weaknesses and vanities of the endearing animal characters.

  • Basic reading skills instruction incorporated within lively, engaging stories
  • Brief, straightforward Getting Started and Spelling guides are the only additional material required
  • Compatible with schools’ Synthetic Phonics programmes
  • Cost-effective: no other beginning reading instruction contains as much reading practice for a comparable price

A short and simple Getting Started with BRI guide contains all the instructions a parent needs to get started. The first two BRI Levels contain 48 stories that your child reads to you. Each new piece of the reading jigsaw is carefully introduced, with plenty of repetition to help the child move from decoding to automatic and fluent reading. Stories are brimful of life as endearing animal characters engage in mischievous little tricks, resolve their differences and explore their world.

Armed with BRI’s simple instructions, the exciting journey towards fluent reading begins. The hardest adjustment for the home schooling parent will be to resist the temptation to overhelp. Only the child can do the work; helping too much will make the journey longer.

An outline of each story is included and can form the basis of lively discussion as well as helping to engage a child in the adventures and character interaction that unfold in each tale. Optional Questions offer the opportunity to double-check comprehension whilst practising speech, language and communication.

A reading of each book can normally be carried out during one short session. A few children will take longer – but this is not a problem. Instilling good reading habits is far more important in the long run than rushing through the books.

The three Levels of BRI books are usually completed by children in little over a year. After this, some children can move to simple chapter books while others need to complete the ARI stories to become competent readers. 'A Spelling with BRI booklet complements the reading programme.

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Reading support for home schooling parents

“When I started BRI with him, Jack recognized his efforts as reading as soon as he finished the few sentences in Story 1. BRI’s goal is that achievable and realised so quickly.” Parent