Explode The Code helps children learn to read by teaching them to use the sounds of letters. In a carefully sequenced program, a variety of exercises provides experience recognizing and combining sounds in order to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories, as well as to build vocabulary. Exercises contain practicing reading, writing, matching, spelling, and copying; simple directions and consistent formats so students can work independently; amusing illustrations, drawn by children; and cumulative review. Tasks in the lessons of Books 1-6 include matching words to sharpen visual discrimination; matching words and sentences with appropriate pictures to strengthen reading comprehension; selecting, then copying, words from picture clues; sequencing letter sounds and reinforcing them kinesthetically by writing the whole word; reading for sentence comprehension; and spelling from memory for cumulative vocabulary. Book 6 1/2 provides further practice in the skills taught in Book 6: vowel plus r words; ar, or, er, ir, ur, wor, war; diphthongs oo, ea, ie, oi-oy, ou-ow, au-aw, igh, and ew-ui-ue-ou.
