Quick Guide to the Fitzroy Program

This Quick Guide provides an overview of the Fitzroy Program and how its Readers and Word Skills workbooks work together to support children as they build strong foundations in reading and writing.

A Complete Literacy Resource

The Fitzroy Program is a carefully structured F–6 (primary school) literacy program built around nine sets of ten decodable Readers. The accompanying Word Skills workbooks reinforce the spelling patterns and high-frequency words introduced at each Reader level, while also developing skills in punctuation, grammar, comprehension and written expression through progressively structured worksheets.

The Phonics Approach

An evidence-based approach in which students are taught that letters represent sounds, and that reading involves decoding words by blending those sounds together. English is an alphabetic language, and although it has only 26 letters, it contains at least 44 sounds. To represent these sounds, letters sometimes work together in spelling patterns such as sh, oo and igh.

By contrast, the whole-word or whole-language approach asks students to memorise words as complete blocks of letters. This approach is outdated and can encourage guessing and inaccurate reading habits.

Step By Step

Literacy involves learning both the patterns of English spelling and the exceptions to those patterns. The Fitzroy Readers advance systematically through carefully levelled stories that build on previously taught spelling patterns and incorporate high-frequency words appropriate to each stage. Knowledge is introduced one step at a time, just as we teach Maths step by step. This approach allows students to experience steady success from the earliest stages, helping to build confidence and enjoyment in reading.

Getting Started

Before reading the first Reader, students should practise blending sounds together. The final pages of the Alphabet Book contain simple pre-reading exercises using vowel-consonant (VC) words such as on, in and at.

Once students understand that words are made from sounds joined together, they are ready to practise the letter-sounds introduced in each Reader.

Students can begin the first Reader after learning the sounds of just thirteen letters. This allows them to begin reading early and experience success quickly. The second Reader introduces only four additional letter-sounds. Students therefore begin reading before learning the entire alphabet or completing the whole Alphabet Book.

Readers 1-10 and 1x-10x are both designed for Foundation-level students. Both sets begin with simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words and gradually move towards more complex word structures, including CVCC and CCVC words, and early spelling patterns such as qu, double letters and ck. The 1x-10x set provides additional practice at a similar level to 1-10, with slightly longer stories.

Spelling Patterns

Once basic letter-sound relationships have been established, each Fitzroy Reader focuses on explicitly teaching a new spelling pattern. Early patterns include common correspondences such as sh and oo, before progressing to more complex spelling patterns such as tch and dge, as well as alternative letter-sound correspondences such as a in path and i in find.

As students move through the program, texts gradually increase in complexity, introducing multi-syllabic words, a wider range of spelling patterns, and a growing number of high-frequency and irregular words.

Letter Names and Letter Sounds

Students need to understand that words are made up of sounds joined together. For example, the word cat contains the sounds c-a-t. The Readers focus on grapheme-phoneme correspondences — the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent.

At the beginner stage, the sound a letter represents is more important than the name of the letter (“ay”, “bee”, “see”, etc.). Rather than saying “see-ay-tee”, we say the sounds c-a-t.

We explain that letters have both names and sounds, and that the sounds are the key to reading.

High-Frequency and Irregular Words

Some words do not follow common spelling patterns, such as was, of and said. In the Fitzroy Program, these are referred to as special words. These words are introduced gradually throughout the Readers and practised systematically alongside regular decoding skills.

Some words may initially appear irregular but later become decodable once a new spelling pattern has been learned. For example, too may first be treated as a special word before students learn the oo spelling pattern in Reader 9.

Using the Back Cover

When starting a new Reader, refer to the back cover to check the spelling pattern (new sound) and high-frequency irregular words (special words) being introduced. These should be practised before reading the story.

Word Skills Workbooks

Designed to be used alongside the Fitzroy Readers as part of a cumulative literacy program, each Word Skills workbook is closely aligned to the corresponding Reader set. There are seven or more worksheets to accompany each Reader.

The A-sheets focus on the letter-sound relationship or spelling pattern introduced in the corresponding Reader. The B-sheets reinforce the high-frequency irregular words (referred to in the program as “special words”). The remaining worksheets develop spelling, grammar, punctuation, comprehension, vocabulary, written expression and broader language conventions through carefully structured activities.

Sequence

We recommend Readers 1-5 followed by 1x-5x, as these Readers focus on basic letter-sound correspondences. Students can then continue with Readers 6-10 followed by 6x-10x, which introduce early spelling patterns. After this, the recommended sequence is 11-20, 11x-20x, 21-30, 21x-30x, 31-40, 41-50 and finally 51-60.

The same structured progression continues throughout the program, supporting the steady development of confident, capable readers and writers through to secondary schooling.

 

FITZROY READERS for the FIRST SEVEN YEARS OF SCHOOLING*

4 yr old / Prep/ Foundation	Fitzroy Alphabet Book	Alphabet Book Contents Page
Prep / Foundation	Readers & Word Skills 1-10	W/S 1-10 Contents Page
Prep / Foundation	Readers & Word Skills 1x-10x	W/S 1x-10x Contents Page
Year 1	Readers & Word Skills 11-20	W/S 11-20 Contents Page
Year 1 / 2	Readers & Word Skills 11x-20x	W/S 11x-20x Contents Page
Year 2	Readers & Word Skills 21-30	W/S 21-30 Contents Page
Year 2 / 3	Readers & Word Skills 21x-30x	W/S 21x-30x Contents Page
Year 3 / 4	Readers & Word Skills 31-40	W/S 31-40 Contents Page
Year 4 / 5	Readers & Word Skills 41-50	W/S 41-50 Contents Page
Year 6	Readers & Word Skills 51-55 & 56-60	W/S 51-55   W/S 56-60 Contents Pages

  * When the Fitzroy Readers are used in conjunction with the Fitzroy Word Skills workbooks.