No on Ada Lovelace
Ada was always interested in mechanical things. As a child, she had drawn fancy boats and steampowered planes. Ada’s mother encouraged her interest in maths, and found extremely good teachers for her.
Mary Somerville
One of those teachers was Mary Somerville. Mary was an incredibly intelligent lady and studied maths and astronomy.
Difference Engine
Mary Somerville introduced Ada to Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage is often called ‘the father of the computer’. He was building a ‘Difference Engine’, which was a tower of numbered wheels. When a handle was turned it could calculate sums. Having seen it, aged 17 (seventeen), Ada had started to write to Babbage about what he was doing.
Charles Babbage
Before calculators or computers were invented it took a long time to solve complex sums. A person had to do the maths problems. They used mathematical tables or charts to help speed the process up.
The mathematical tables were written out by people who were called ‘computers’. This is where the name ‘computers’ comes from!
mathematical tables
One of Charles Babbage’s jobs was to check numbers on mathematical tables. He decided to build a calculating device to do the job for him.
The importance of what Ada wrote was not recognised, however, until many years later. It has been suggested that Ada’s notes inspired a man called Alan Turing.
Alan Turing
Alan Turing was a codebreaker in World War 2, who solved the very complex codes that the Germans used to send secret messages. To do this, Turing and his team built computers using Ada’s notes and concepts.
Jolly Phonics Readers
These readers have been written with a carefully controlled vocabulary, and are specifically designed for children who are learning to read and write with Jolly Phonics.
• The text in these Purple Level Books (fifth level) uses only decodable regular words that use the letter-sound knowledge taught so far: the 42 main letter sounds and the main alternative letter-sound spellings (‹y› as in happy, the hop-over ‹e› spellings of the long vowel sounds, ‹ay› as in day, ‹ea› as in seat, ‹y› and ‹igh› as in fly and high, ‹ow› as in low and now, ‹ew› as in few, ‹oy› as in joy, ‹ir› and ‹ur› as in bird and turn, ‹al›, ‹au› and ‹aw› as in talk, pause and saw, soft ‹c› and soft ‹g› as in cent and gene, ‹ph› as in phonics, and ‹air›, ‹ear› and ‹are› as in hair, pear and care), and a small number of tricky words (frequently used words that are not fully decodable at this stage). In this level, children are also expected to know and use the rule, ‘If the short vowel doesn’t work, try the long vowel.’
• All new tricky words and alternative vowel spellings used are shown on the front inside cover. These can be used as a quick practice activity before starting the book.
• Faint type is used for silent letters, like the ‹b› in lamb.
• Comprehension questions and discussion topics are included at the end of the book. These ensure that children are able to read the text and also get meaning from it.
Purple Level Readers
Inky Mouse & Friends General Fiction
The Circus
The Steam Fair
Gingerbread
The Scarecrow Festival
The Accident
Hedgehog Help
The Hare and the Tortoise Goldilocks and The Three Bears Assembly
The Enormous Turnip Rumpelstiltskin
Puppets
Little Red Riding Hood Monster
Many More Monsters
Arion and the Dolphins
The Pumpkin Party
Nonfiction
Bears
Dolphins
Ada Lovelace
Martha Ricks
The Amazon
Hairy Monsters
Town Mouse and Country Mouse
Centipedes and Millipedes
To see the full range of Jolly Phonics products, visit our website at www.jollylearning.co.uk
www.jollylearning.co.uk info@jollylearning.co.uk © Sara Wernham 2024 (text) © Kate Daubney 2024 (illustrations) (Beehive Illustration)
