About

Welcome to Animabet Phonics!

ABOUT ME!

Animabet was created by me, a kindergarten teacher, in 2018 when I decided to retire from traditional classroom teaching to pursue teaching online. I decided that I could continue to teach year-to-year in a small rural classroom and impact maybe a few hundred or more children before I retired, or I could take the leap and try to take what I know about teaching and learning and share it with a potentially unlimited audience online, thanks to what is now possible with the growth of social media and online learning platforms.

I wanted to take all that I had learned over the years about how children learn to read and combine those learnings into one easy to access phonics program that could take children from learning their letter names and sounds to actively reading and decoding.

I used to tell parents that it was a “little miracle” each time that a student began reading, and I still believe this, but I also know that there are so many parents, teachers, and even administrators who actually have no idea about how you actually get a non-reader reading. Well, I did know exactly how to do it, and I wanted to share the best practices for supporting a child in their reading journey and having fun along the way. I knew that my program would center on the universal love children have for animals. I love them too, and I can’t think of a more important time in history to continue to foster that innate love for the natural world than right now!

The keystone component of the Animabet program is the deck of ABC playing cards and the six-phase program I have developed that builds letter name and sound recognition skills.  Once children know their letter names and sounds with automaticity, along with other pre-reading skills, they can begin to decode and read. These pre-reading skills, also called phonemic awareness, are a high predictor for later reading comprehension.

But of course, children can’t read without reading material, and reading material of high interest was generally lacking, so I wrote the set of 60 phonics readers that could move a student from high picture support and highly predictable text to greater reliance on decoding. These little books will staircase your student reader in an enjoyable and low stress way. Each story about a group of animal friends builds on the next until students are actively reading and decoding.  

Welcome to Animabet! I’m so glad you are here! We are going to have a great year, grow our brains, and learn to read!

If you are a

• primary teacher
• resource teacher
• administrator looking for PD
• concerned parent
• pre-k, TK, kindergarten or first grade student
• older student who needs remediation
• home school student
• home and hospital student
• migrant education student
• independent study student
• adult learner
• or even an English Language Learner in another country

you are welcome here. We invite you to come learn and play with us on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

Kathy Moorehead M.Ed