Year 1 Phonics Check

The following is taken from the Department for Education website:

A new, statutory phonics screening check for all pupils will be introduced in Year 1 this academic year. The check will be administered during the week commencing 18 June.

The purpose of the Year 1 phonics screening check is to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard.

Pupils who have not reached this standard at the end of Year 1, should receive support from their school to ensure they can improve their phonic decoding skills. Pupils will then have the opportunity to retake the screening check.

For parents who want to help their children prepare for the phonics check, Oxford University Press have published 'Read With Biff, Chip and Kipper: My Phonics Kit.

The pack includes:

* Three phonics workbooks to provide lots of practice in this early reading skill. Each workbook includes tips for doing the activities together, and all of the sounds are included on the CD-ROM for your reference.

* Six carefully levelled interactive ebooks and activities on a CD-ROM.

* A colourful reward chart with stickers to build confidence.

* Advice from phonics expert Laura Sharp, providing answers to questions such as 'What is phonics?' 'How do I say the sounds?', 'How can I support my child with phonics and the phonics check?'.

Details can be found here on the website.

New Songbirds Phonics home editions

Songbirds Phonics, written by Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson, have now been published in great value home versions.

For more information on these lovely books that are ideal for practising early blending skills, visit the website here

Two thirds of children fail new phonics reading test

The test-run of the new primary school reading check (due to be introduced in June 2012 for Year 1 pupils in England) suggests that two-thirds of pupils are likely to fail it when it is introduced.

So what does this tell us when we consider the large number of children who continue to need extra support with their reading and end up leaving school without the literacy skills they need on entering the world of work?

The simple truth is that, despite the big government push for all schools to teach phonics, only a minority (about 27% according to the DfE) appear to be teaching it systematically. The majority of schools, although using phonics, continue to use it as part of a mix of methods alongside picture clues and memorising spellings.

Until this changes, and teachers put faith in teaching phonics first and fast, without confusing children by mixing it in with distractions, reading standards will not be improved.

More information can be found on the DfE website here

abc PocketPhonics app

I had the opportunity recently to review a phonics product called PocketPhonics, and I have to say I was impressed.

PocketPhonics is an educational app that works with both the iPhone and iPad and is designed to teach children:

• letter sounds
• how to write letters
• how to blend letter sounds together to read simple words

The app mainly covers the 'simple alphabetic code' (the most common spelling for each of the 44 phonemes or letter sounds) plus a few alternative spelling variations:

s, a, t, p, i, n

m, d, g, o, c, k

ck, e, u, r, h, b

f, ff, l, ll, ss, j

v, w, x, y, z, zz

qu, ch, sh, th, th, ng

ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, oo

ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear

air, ure, er, ou, ue, ay

ou, wh, ir, ph, ie, ew

ea, aw, oe, au

What is really clever about this app, is that the parent / teacher can set the level so that the child can progress through the sounds at their own individual pace. The word games they play are based on the sounds they have already learnt.

The sounds are very pure and there are various fonts and writing styles to choose from (including upper and lower case letters).

There is also a free guide that can be requested that explains very clearly why children should learn to read with synthetic phonics.

A lot of research and thought has gone into producing PocketPhonics - if you are looking for a way to help your child learn their letter sounds in a fun and engaging way (and you happen to own either an iPhone or an iPad) then I think this is a great app to go for.

This video gives more information - note that the sounds are given using the American English accent - a British English option is also available on the app.

New phonics reading test for six-year-olds

The government has announced plans to introduce a phonics progress test in all schools throughout England for children in Year 1. A pilot will take place in 2011, with the aim of rolling it out nationally in the summer of 2012.

The purpose will be to identify those children who have gaps in their knowledge of letter-sounds and difficulties with blending them to read words. It will therefore enable the school to target those in need of extra support.

The proposed test will include ‘non-words’ so that children will have to decode the word to read it, rather than relying on their visual memory of known whole words or using clues such as pictures or context to guess the words.

Inevitably, this has already led to criticism from anti-phonics lobbyists, who believe that phonics should be taught alongside other methods, rather than on its own - they argue that it will not test other reading skills such as overall vocabulary or comprehension of what they are reading.

Yes – these critics are correct – it will only test whether the child has reached the required level of phonics decoding – that is the point. Once children can decode properly with phonics early on, they can then move on to higher order reading skills.

Currently, one in six 7-year-olds and one in five 11-year-olds still fail to reach the standard expected of them in reading. Some time ago I read this analogy that sums this up very well:

‘There is an education bus and it stops to pick up passengers all the way to Year Three. After this, the bus accelerates and it gets much more difficult to get on. Unfortunately, many children never manage to get a seat on this bus and get left behind, unable to access the school curriculum properly.’

I think this new test could be an important bus stop to help make sure all our young children get a seat on that bus.

More information on the proposed test can be found on the Reading Reform Foundation (RRF) website and the DfE website.

Floppy's Phonics Sounds and Letters

Floppy’s Phonics Sounds and Letters is a brand new synthetic phonics teaching programme that is being launched in January by Oxford University Press.

It is completely matched to Letters and Sounds, which is now used by many schools throughout the UK.

The new programme will provide teachers with all the resources needed to teach Letters and Sounds, including Handbooks, Activity Sheets, Assessment records, Alphabet Code Chart, Flashcards, Frieze and interactive CD-ROMs.

The Sounds and Letters books are not storybooks. They introduce and revise each set of sounds in the context of Oxford Reading Tree scenes.

The new programme has been devised by Debbie Hepplewhite, which is why I am confident about the quality of the content of these resources. Debbie has campaigned over many years for the introduction of synthetic phonics teaching for all children and has offered advice and expertise to many during that time.

Floppy’s Phonics Sounds and Letters will be available to buy on our website as soon as it is published. Details can be found here

Sonic Phonics Software CD-ROM

Sonic Phonics Software is the most recent addition to our range of phonics resources.

If you are looking for an interactive tool for teaching all the letter sounds in a simple, non-cluttered way, then this CD-ROM, designed in conjunction with early years specialists, is a great option.

The software is very simple to use. The letters and digraphs are organised into levels so pupils can learn letter sounds and how to blend sounds into simple words, progressing at their own pace (the order follows the 'Letters and Sounds' programme).

The CD-ROM teaches all the letter sounds, which are spoken in a very 'pure' way - so important when it comes to blending sounds into words. More difficult levels explicitly teach letters that can make more than one sound and sounds that can be written in different ways.

There is also a video option - the chosen letter or word can be presented as a video clip of a mouth moving and pronouncing the letters, so this is particularly useful for those with a hearing difficulty or with English as a second language.

This great value CD-ROM is ideal for:

* parents / carers to use at home

* teachers (and teaching assistants) to use in the classroom

* student teachers

* tutors (of children or adults)

* speech therapists

Visit our website here for details of how to buy this software as either a Single User version or Site Licence for schools.