List of Books, Phonic Skills and High Frequency Words

The 500 Books are listed alphabetically. Additional information includes a summary of the content of each book and details of authors, subject matter, themes and the proportion of every book that can be read through the 85 phonics skills and 100 high frequency words that are used for skill- matching.

Phonic skills are ranked according to our analysis of children’s literature. We also include details of how often these phonic skills have been assessed in the phonic screen since it was introduced in 2012 and 2015. This will henceforth be updated annually.

High frequency words will also be listed according to their frequency in written English.

The Programmes section of the website allows teachers to refine and personalise the skill-matching function of 500 Books so that it is finely tuned to the synthetic phonics programme that they are using to teach reading. We have identified five widely used phonics programmes (Optima Reading, Jolly Phonics, Letters and Sounds, Read Write Inc, and THRASS) and our research has calculated the proportion of the 500 books that can be read by the skills in each programme which are also listed according to their frequency in written English.