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SENISSUE32 www.senmaGaZIne.CO.uk

REVIEW

This is the new Five Minute Box, Five Minute Box 2 – it has been developed to build on and continue the established

routines, skills and self-help strategies that have made The Five Minute Box (Box 1) so successful. So if you use it to help children with literacy problems each day for, well...5 minutes, it does exactly what it says on the box.

So is the son of 5 min box as good as the original? Well fi rst off the blurb that it came with it, says it covers the next stage of phonic development after the original 5 min box, so it’s not a replacement, but a sequel. And if like me, you wish you had thought of it fi rst, or did and never acted on it, I was positively salivating when I heard I was going to get my mits on it. Was it going to live up to the fi rst original? And if so, is it as useful?

So what do you get? Well, like Box 1 everything that you need to use is in there. Which is what I like about all the “boxes”; you don’t have to go hoofi ng around your school storeroom to try and fi nd x, y or z, nor thankfully, do you have to photocopy anything.

It follows the same ideas of Box 1 and comes fully formed. So I threw it to one of our LSAs at Soho-Parish to road test with one of our Year 4 children, who has quite a bit of reading and spelling

issues. He had got a bit bored recently doing the CVC stuff and really needs moving on. Perfect to see how it delivers as he is the target audience. He still has it and I may have charges brought against me if I once again tried to wrestle it from him.

You see the real genius thing, apart from having everything in one box, is that it helps fulfi l that ubiquitous line in most statement targets ‘x needs a multi-sensory reading remediation scheme of work’. It’s what it is, and a really good one. It links very well with Jolly Phonics or other whole school phonics programs and it builds confi dence, especially if used as a pre-teaching tool or to re-enforce stuff. Precisely what your Joe dyslexic or EAL kids need.

Small and reasonably priced, it’s that re-teaching and confi dence that these guys need and lets face it you can do a lot in 5 minutes, make a baby, go one stop on the Northern Line, listen to 1/8th of Dark Side of the Moon, boil an egg, wait in line for the photocopier for it to break down, so why not teach some one to read instead.

Five Minute Box 2 ReviewBy Alastair Coomes

it and I may have charges brought against me if I once again