Focus on Phonics

New Songbirds Phonics home editions

2012-01-14T12:34:00.002Z

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

2011-12-10T08:20:00.006Z

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

2011-05-17T14:04:00.019+01:00

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

2010-11-29T10:45:00.009Z

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

2010-10-18T12:08:00.007+01:00

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

2010-08-10T09:17:00.023+01:00

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.

Michael Gove – Secretary of State for Education

2010-05-13T12:09:00.004+01:00

Michael Gove has been appointed by David Cameron as 'Secretary of state for Education' in the new Cabinet.

Why do I think this is important? This is Michael Gove’s answer to a recent question as to what he saw as one of the main priorities for early years teaching:

“The central priority for the first years of primary schooling must be learning to read. Unless children have learned to read, they can't read to learn. Which is why we will improve teacher training to provide authoritative instruction in the implementation of systematic synthetic phonics. The most detailed academic studies – in Clackmannanshire and West Dunbartonshire – show that in these two relatively disadvantaged Scottish local authorities, systematic synthetic phonics teaching effectively eliminated illiteracy. So we will do everything we can to support teachers in getting reading right so that children can then go on to enjoy a broad, balanced and wide-ranging curriculum”. (The Guardian March 2010).

All those who are passionate about teaching children to read with Synthetic Phonics will be hoping that this new appointment will lead to a guaranteed whole school approach to teaching in this way.

Logically, this will also hopefully mean a re-think of the way that millions are spent on Reading Recovery intervention for struggling readers. Although this programme does include phonics, it is a mixed method approach that is at odds with good synthetic phonics teaching. It is true that there are many success stories, but that is not surprising given the intensive one-to-one tuition received by the children. If that same one-to-one time could be spent on additional phonics catch-up, I believe the results would undoubtedly be much better for a fraction of the cost.

Michael Gove has vowed to eliminate illiteracy in schools in England by the time he leaves office – I wish him every success.

Usborne Very First Reading Series

2010-03-18T10:15:00.006Z

I have been debating the merits of a shiny new series that is due to be published by Usborne this month called 'Very First Reading'.

It is a series of 15 books, based on synthetic phonics, that has been developed to tie in with the Letters and Sounds programme now being used in many primary schools.

In the first seven books, the adult and child take turns to read - the text that the child reads is decodable, based on the sounds they will have learnt. From book 8, the child reads the whole story, with the adult providing help when needed.

On the face of it, this series sounds great - we all know that Usborne publish excellent quality books with lovely illustrations. I do, however, have one or two concerns about the series.

Firstly, the cost - at £4.99 a book, this makes the series unaffordable for many.

Secondly, when children are learning to read, they need a lot of practice at each level, and should only be asked to read text containing sounds they have been taught. There is only one book for each set of sounds, and if these are to be used in a serious way to support reading, parents would have to know exactly which sounds are known, and when to introduce the next book.

Thirdly, I am not convinced that when a young child is having a lovely story read to them, they will be interested in stopping to read their bit (which can be a painfully slow process when at the initial stage of blending).

I would be very interested to hear feedback from anyone using the series once it is published.

If you are interested in learning more about the Very First Reading series, you might like to watch this YouTube video of Peter Usborne - it has some interesting information about how and why children learn to read with phonics, and how decodable books are written:

High Frequency Words & Tricky Words

2010-03-03T17:55:00.011Z

High Frequency Words (HFWs) are the words that appear most often in printed materials.

Schools used to expect children to learn 45 HFWs by the end of their first year of school. These have now been replaced by a list of 100 most common words that are taught during Reception Year and Year 1:

1	the	21	that	41	not	61	look	81	put
2	and	22	with	42	then	62	don’t	82	could
3	a	23	all	43	were	63	come	83	house
4	to	24	we	44	go	64	will	84	old
5	said	25	can	45	little	65	into	85	too
6	in	26	are	46	as	66	back	86	by
7	he	27	up	47	no	67	from	87	day
8	I	28	had	48	mum	68	children	88	made
9	of	29	my	49	one	69	him	89	time
10	it	30	her	50	them	70	Mr	90	I’m
11	was	31	what	51	do	71	get	91	if
12	you	32	there	52	me	72	just	92	help
13	they	33	out	53	down	73	now	93	Mrs
14	on	34	this	54	dad	74	came	94	called
15	she	35	have	55	big	75	oh	95	here
16	is	36	went	56	when	76	about	96	off
17	for	37	be	57	It’s	77	got	97	asked
18	at	38	like	58	see	78	their	98	saw
19	his	39	some	59	looked	79	people	99	make
20	but	40	so	60	very	80	your	100	an

The problem is that many of these common words have complex spellings, so that children will not be able to read them in the early stages of reading by using their phonic decoding skills learnt, so they have to learn them by heart.

Tricky words
A ‘tricky’ word either contains letters (or letter combinations) that the child has not yet been taught (and will become fully decodable for them later on) or contains an irregular part that does not follow phonic rules (such as ‘here’, does’, ‘one’). Children do have to learn these words, but even with these words, an understanding of letter sounds helps, as it is only part of the word that is irregular.

A lot of words that are said to be 'irregular', or 'not decodable' are in fact perfectly decodable - they just have to be introduced at an appropriate stage. The majority of HFWs do follow decoding rules and can be sounded out once children have knowledge of how the sounds are represented in alternative ways.

Reading schemes such as the Oxford Reading Tree (Biff, Chip and Kipper stories) are written deliberately to include and 'learn' the HFWs. Good decodable reading schemes keep the HFWs to an absolute minimum in the early stages, giving children a chance to practise their blending skills using the sounds they have been taught.

If your child is following a good synthetic phonics programme, you will be very pleased to hear that they should not be bringing home lists of random, complex words that need to be learned by memory – a nightmare for both children and their parents! This is because phonic skills are established with regular words before trickier words are introduced slowly and systematically. These skills allow them to READ any word they come across (and understand it if it is in their spoken vocabulary).

“Of course English is not a simple phonetic

language, it’s very complex – that’s the problem –

but it does have a code. It has to be taught step by

step, gradually adding the irregularities. English has

a million words and you can’t teach them all one by

one” (Ruth Miskin).

Decodable reading books

2010-02-16T16:43:00.010Z

Why are good decodable reading books so important for early readers?

Decodable reading books are books used in the early stages of teaching children to read with phonics. They contain only (or mainly) text that can be ‘decoded’ (or sounded out) based on the letter-sounds the child has already been taught. This encourages children to sound out words and blend sounds to read words, rather than guessing words from pictures or context.

This recent thread on Mumsnet is a good example of how frustrating it can be for children who are given the wrong sort of reading books when they are in the early stages of learning to read with phonics.

If a school is teaching a certain phonics programme such as Jolly Phonics, Read Write Inc., or Letters and Sounds, then in an ideal world the children would all be given decodable reading books that follow the same sequence as that particular scheme

Unfortunately, many schools still have large stocks of the Oxford Reading Tree ‘Biff and Chip’ style books. These use predictable, repetitive text with illustrations that are deliberately designed to provide clues to the text content. They also use many ‘sight words’ that cannot be decoded so the child who has been learning phonics gets very frustrated when presented with lots of words that contradict what they have been taught.

Children using these books soon develop a bad habit of guessing what the words might be rather than reading them. This may not be a problem whilst their reading books contain lots of pictures but eventually their memory for sight words will reach overload and if they haven’t learnt how to read the alphabetic code properly they will struggle to read more complex texts as they move on in school.

If your child brings home books that they are unable to read based on the phonic sounds they already know, the best advice is to share the book with them and help with any words they are unable to work out, to avoid them struggling and guessing words.

Interactive websites for children

2010-02-16T14:09:00.002Z

There are many websites providing free interactive games and activities for children – some better than others! Here are some that I think are worth a visit:

Poisson Rouge
A treasure chest of activities for young children to explore – they can develop their ICT skills without the need to read any text or follow any instructions.
(For parents who want to understand what the site has to offer before allowing their child to roam it freely, there is a user guide – click on the Union Jack symbol at the bottom of the home page, then ‘User Guide’)

NGfL Cymru
This site has a useful page for seeing how to write letters correctly and hear the sounds. The first page has the letter names – click on the arrow on the bottom right of the page to go to the letter formation page.

Family Learning
A selection of links to free phonics games

Starfall
This is a popular site with many schools and parents (the American accent is not to everyone’s taste though).

BBC Words and Pictures
Games and activities that focus on a different areas of phonics work.

School websites
A number of schools have created their own websites – these are the best I have come across so far. I have linked to the Literacy pages but they also have lots of activities covering other areas of learning:

Woodlands Junior School,Kent

Northwood Primary School, Kent

If you come across another great website, or one of these links is broken, please add your comment.

Blending Sounds

2010-02-11T16:53:00.020Z

Blending is one of the skills children need to develop when learning to read with phonics. They need to be able to look at the letters in a word, say the sounds (all through the word) and hear the word.

Blending needs practice – some children grasp the skill straight away and others can take much longer. The two main reasons why children struggle to hear the word when they have said the sounds are that they don’t know the letter sounds well enough (so they pause to think between letters) or the letter sounds are not being pronounced correctly.

If you are not sure how to pronounce the letter sounds correctly, take a look at our Hear the Sounds page on the website.

Children can start blending sounds into words as soon as they know a small group of letters well. The words chosen to start with will therefore depend on the letter-sounds already known. Jolly Phonics starts with the group of letters 's', 'a', 't', 'p', 'i', 'n' because they make more simple 3-letter words than any other group of six letters. Read Write Inc. starts with the group 'm', 'a', 's', 'd', 't'.

If your child knows the letter-sounds well but is finding it difficult to blend them to read words, there are a number of tactics you can try to help them:

*Using pictures or objects, ask your child to find the ‘c-a-t’ or ‘p-i-g’ for example – if they can put the spoken sounds together, they will eventually learn to do the same with written sounds.

*Try using Magnetic letters or letters on cards to make simple words.

*Start with 2-sound words like ‘is’, ‘in’, ‘it’ to gain confidence, then move on to simple 3-sound words (CVC words or consonant-vowel-consonant) such as ‘sit’, ‘pin’.

*If your child is adding ‘uh’ onto the consonant sounds, try getting them to whisper the sound as this tends to keep it ‘pure’ this will make it easier to hear the target word.

*Get your child to slide sounds together more quickly until they are literally saying the word.

* Use very simple decodable sentences or books – it may be that your child doesn’t understand why they are sounding out and blending - Decodable Reading Books

* Use finger tracking under the letters to read the word.

*Having a picture on the back of the word card is good so that the child can turn it over and see if they have read the word correctly.

*Make sure your child is reading the letter-sounds – not saying them and looking away trying to remember them. Also, make sure they are reading all through the word – not reading the first sound then guessing the rest.

A useful video showing how to blend sounds into words can be found on a great website Mr Thorne Does Phonics here

If you own an iPhone or iPod, then you might want to look at this great app called PocketPhonics. This makes the most of 21st century technology to provide an engaging and interactive way to help your child learn their letter sounds and how to blend them into words.

The thing to remember is that learning to blend will click eventually - if you have any other good suggestions for how you have helped your child learn to blend, do let us know!

How important is phonemic awareness?

2010-02-09T15:48:00.016Z

What is phonemic awareness and how important is it when learning to read?

Phonemic awareness is the basis for learning phonics - it is the ability to identify individual sounds within words so that later on, the printed letters can be matched up with their proper sounds.

So phonemic awareness is not about asking children to name letters or know which letters represent which sounds – it is being aware of the sounds in spoken language.

There is some debate as to how important it is for children to have good phonemic awareness before being introduced to letters. General consensus is that whilst it is not a pre-requisite to learning to read, it is recognised that children who can hear phonemes in words and sound them out accurately are generally well prepared to make a good start in reading and writing.

Young children need to be given every opportunity for speaking and listening and lots of games to help develop phonemic awareness both before and whilst learning letter/sounds. This is an area where parents/carers can play such a vital role in their child’s development and give them the best preparation before formal phonics teaching begins in school.
• Tell stories as well as reading from books – this will encourage your child to listen.
• Play I-Spy
• Play lots of oral blending games –“It’s time for b-e-d”, “Could you go and fetch your c-oa-t”
• Sing lots of Nursery Rhymes
• Play rhyming word games such as rhyming bingo
• Play listening games

We have recently added some great new resources for developing speaking and listening - visit the website to find out.

You might also like to know that is not only children that can have difficulty with oral blending, as this very funny YouTube video shows!

5 years on...

2010-02-09T11:42:00.008Z

Focus on Phonics was launched 5 years ago as a small, family run internet business. I thought I would use this opening blog to give a bit of background.

As the owner of a Montessori Nursery School in Hampshire, I used to receive catalogues from educational suppliers that were filled with pages of great resources for young children.

As a mum of two small children myself at the time, I found it surprising how few of those great resources could be found on the High Street.

Having moved to Surrey, I worked as a volunteer in local schools, helping children learn to read with phonics. Because I no longer had access to the educational catalogues, I spent many hours making resources and trying to find what I could on the internet, but it was hard work.

So came the idea of setting up an internet shop where parents could go and find all the resources they needed in one place, along with some information for those who wanted to help their children learn to read with phonics.

One of our most popular pages has been the Hear the Sounds page – where children can click on a letter (or letters) to hear how to say the sound in a ‘pure’ way (with no ‘uh’ at the end of the consonants) – so important when the time comes to blend sounds into words.

5 years on, we remain a small, family run internet business but big changes have taken place since those early days. One of the biggest changes has been that, since 2006, all primary schools are expected to teach phonics to children in Reception. Many schools now use one of the main commercial programmes such as Jolly Phonics or Read Write Inc., or follow the Letters and Sounds programme. Although The Letters and Sounds programme is free to schools, unlike the commercial programmes, it comes with no resources. Teachers therefore either have to make their own, or try to find suitable resources to support their teaching.

We now offer Jolly Phonics and Read Write Inc. programmes, resources specifically made to support Letters and Sounds plus many more Activities and Games that are suitable for parents to use at home and teachers to use in the classroom.

5 years ago it was very difficult to find suitable decodable reading books – an essential part of learning to read with phonics. Today, there are really good books available – I particularly like the Dandelion Launchers and Readers that were published last year and they seem to be proving popular with parents and teachers alike.

Customers often ask if we have a catalogue but, because we are always trying to improve the range of what we can offer, a hard copy would soon be out of date!

So our website continues to grow with the times. If you haven’t visited us yet, or if you have and you didn’t find what you were looking for, we would love to hear from you!