ABSTRACT
Purposes for reading need to be planned carefully in advance, and the idea of letting words jump out from the page explained to the children. It is important that real containers and labels should be brought into the classroom, with the children encouraged to make their own contributions. Classroom language provides the framework for extending and decontext-ualising the competence children already have. Children thus come to realise that a vowel is merely breath exhaled while changing the position of the organs of speech to get ready to sound the next consonant. Using the same paired organisation, get the children to rewrite a similar short passage, this time swapping two letters over whenever they occur. Certainly they embrace the notion of reading being part of the context of ordinary living, and assume that all children in Britain have unconsciously absorbed print in some form since babyhood.
