About Eva Retkin
A teacher’s experience.
A lasting ambition.
Read in a Week grows from Eva Retkin’s work to make reading clear, practical and approachable for children and the adults helping them.
Thirty years in the classroom
Eva taught for 20 years in state education and 10 years in the private sector. Her experience included infant, junior and special educational needs teaching.
Through that work, she developed a step-by-step reading approach organised around vowel sounds, letter patterns and families of words. She wanted a method that parents could follow at home as well as teachers in the classroom.
Making the patterns easier to see
Eva’s original scheme used word lists and the simple act of covering and uncovering letters. Children could focus on part of a word, then bring the letters together to read the whole word.
The developing Read in a Week online programme brings these ideas into Explorer, Trailblazer and Reading practise: different ways to explore word lists, reveal letters gradually and try short reading activities with an adult’s guidance.
From the archive
Featured in
The Sunday Times
22 October 2000 · Education
Report by Alison Brace
“Deceptively simple — but effective.”
In Learning to read is as easy as ABC, Alison Brace reported on Eva’s original scheme, known as Cover Up. The article followed two pupils through a week of short lessons and described her use of vowels, letter patterns and covering letters.
It is a historical account of Eva’s teaching approach, and part of the story behind the programme being developed today.
Taking the work further
An invitation to education authorities and partners.
Eva wanted her work to reach the people responsible for reading education. We welcome conversations with schools, education authorities, publishers and organisations interested in exploring the approach or discussing its wider use.