Sunshine Starters

Our new balanced literacy program for beginning readers

Sunshine Starters is a new literacy program that is underpinned by sound pedagogy and evidence-based findings on the teaching of early literacy. Extensive research has identified the ‘five pillars of reading’ as essential skills readers need to learn to succeed and the components that are required of a quality literacy program.

Engaging fiction and non-fiction texts levels 1–15
Essential skills teaching focus on the inside back cover of all titles
Comprehensive guided reading teaching notes available for download
High-frequency words presented as flash cards on the inside cover of each book

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Sunshine Starters program focuses on the five essential skill areas that all students need to develop into successful readers. Evidence-based findings have identified these key areas as:

• PHONEMIC AWARENESS
• PHONICS
• VOCABULARY
• COMPREHENSION
• FLUENCY

FICTION

The Sunshine Starters fiction titles have been designed to hook students in from the cover and then keep them reading right up to the very last enjoyable page! Our talented authors have written stories that even feature footloose flamingoes and runaway pants! There are an abundance of fun stories that your students will want to read.

SOUND STRUCTURE

All titles have been carefully levelled using reading recovery criteria so that the gradient of difficulty supports beginning readers. Careful consideration is given to the size and spacing of the text, the connection between illustration and text and also the complexity of the language and sentence structures.

NON-FICTION

The new Sunshine Starters non-fiction texts are perfect for sparking students’ natural curiosity about the world around them. Including high interest topics, the books will help students to develop their general knowledge and expand their vocabulary.

TEXT TYPES

Students are introduced to a range of different text types including factual reports, recounts, procedural texts, persuasive texts and explanations.

Sunshine Starters

Our new balanced literacy program for beginning readers