Key Links

Developed by Jill Eggleton, who has been working with teachers for many years and she knows that the teachers need more support now. 

Reading is the product of two cognitive elements — language comprehension and decoding. Reading instruction therefore must focus on both language comprehension and the art of decoding. The art of decoding ensures that words are read accurately. Inaccurate and non-fluent decoding impacts negatively on reading comprehension. You cannot read if you can’t decode accurately, however you cannot learn to read by just learning to decode.

In order to decode print, students need phonemic awareness skills and phonic knowledge.

The second edition of Key Links uniquely combines the processes of decoding and language comprehension.

Students are exposed to every link in the literacy chain through

• actively thinking and talking about what and how they read
• being explicitly exposed to comprehension and processing strategies in a systematic way
• practising flow, expression and phrasing in their oral reading 
• reading titles that are carefully scaffolded to build and reinforce vocabulary and letter–sound relationships.

For the teacher and care-giver there are

1. GUIDE NOTES provided at the beginning of each book

2. FOCUS PANELS on every spread which provide a classroom to home link to help ensure parents and teachers are ‘on the same page’ if books are taken home.

3. carefully sequenced titles to scaffold and reinforce literacy skills and strategies including: letter-sound relationships, high-frequency words, vocabulary, punctuation, reading fluency, processing skills and comprehension strategies.

Note: The Key Links colour levels have been mapped below to correlate with the following levelling systems: CEFR — Common European Framework of Reference, FP — Fountas/Pinnell, DRA — Developmental Reading Assessment, RR — Reading Recovery™ and school grade level.​ It should be noted that this is only an approximate guide and teachers are encouraged to freely adjust this correlation according to their personal evaluation and professional judgment.

Why Key Links?

• Build a strong literacy foundation with small-group reading instruction
• Use the before, during, and after reading suggestions to build comprehension and reading for meaning
• Develop higher-order thinking skills and reinforce comprehension and writing skills with after-reading activities.