The Revised ‘Spelling Made Easy’ Text Books (published 2012) are faithful to the original structure and sequence but the range has also been updated to include:

• Expanded initial word lists to encompass early introduction of the synthetic phonics sequence
• Synthetic phonics sequence highlighted in Red Introductory book
• Additional material included in Red Introductory Level and Green Level 1 books
• New ‘pupil friendly’ typeface
• Texts modernised and updated as required with completely new text for Purple Book Level 3

The highly important original features of the series are still present including: The clearly defined incremental sequence of sounds including phonemes and blends; Word lists for each sound are taught word by word in a ‘listen, say and write’ sequence. Violet Brand’s original suggested teaching method, using the ‘a’ sound for instance, was:

(a) Write the sound in red on the board – saying it
(b) Show the card with the family of words written in ‘blackboard’ size
(c) Cover all words but ‘cat’ – children read it
(d) Gradually uncover all words until full list is seen and read
(e) Draw attention of children to common sound/symbol in all of the words
(f) Pupils write the words as teacher dictates them
(g) Encourage all pupils to quietly say the sounds as they write them

A dictation accompanies each new word list for pupils to write out and then identify words with the featured sounds. 

‘High frequency’ words are introduced early.

Teaching points’ focus on possible areas of difficulty with practical suggestions to work on these.