Going Places Levels 1-2

In Going Places, readers follow a variety of creatures travelling around their town by bus to interesting local destinations. Each page introduces a new stop-like the shop, petrol station, park, or library-using a repeated sentence structure: "I am going to the..." This structure reinforces high-frequency words and supports early reading fluency. The book offers an excellent platform to explore themes of community, routine journeys, and transport while building phonemic awareness through recurring letter sounds (e.g., p and s) and the -ing word ending. Visual cues in the illustrations support prediction and engagement, while punctuation elements such as full stops and exclamation marks are modelled. This title also encourages students to innovate their own versions of the text, further promoting oral language and creative writing.

Educational Benefits:

• Supports recognition and reading of high-frequency and content words in context
• Reinforces early phonics and phonemic awareness (e.g., initial consonants, word endings)
• Builds one-to-one word matching and tracking skills
• Encourages storytelling and innovation using sentence stems

Classroom Ideas:

• Create a classroom map and label community places visited in the book
• Practise sentence building with magnetic words using the sentence stem œI am going to the¦
• Act out travel scenarios with role-play props (e.g., bus, library, shop)
• Use the book as a shared reading text for fluency practice and group discussion

Safety & Information:

• Ages: 4+
• Book dimensions: 14.5cm x 16.5cm; 16 pages
• Text and materials are suitable for guided reading in early years settings
• Use under adult supervision with small classroom materials like scissors and glue