Phonics

Phonics feature image

Simple, fun ideas to help children with phonics

Literacy expert Gill Matthews, shares some simple ideas for how to make phonics learning fun and enjoyable. You may find this helpful to share with your pupils’ parents or you can adapt the ideas for your home learning plan. Phonics is about learning the sounds that individual letters make: singly… Read More

Letters and Sounds and Challenging the More Able Child

Teachers often get training on how to support struggling children. They spend time planning and creating resources to support those children. However, teacher training can sometimes miss showing teachers how to challenge the most able children, and challenge (particularly in phonics teaching) is regularly a focus of attention in Ofsted… Read More
Letters

Closing the Word Gap

On the 27th of April Collins hosted the first Closing the Word Gap early reading conference. The conference was led by early reading experts Charlotte Raby and Emily Guille-Marrett who discussed comprehension, fluency, phonics and reading for pleasure. We’ve rounded up some of the key findings from the day below. The… Read More

Teaching Phonics

With the introduction of the Year One Phonics Screening Check in 2012 and the arrival of a new curriculum in 2014 with a greater focus on systematic phonics, it has never been more important to ensure as a school that you have got your phonics teaching right. For many schools… Read More

Retaking the phonics screening check

By the end of June all Year One pupils would have completed their Phonics Progress Test and now the media furore over the use of non-words has died down, teachers have had the chance to see how confident their pupils are  with decoding familiar and  unfamiliar words. With… Read More

Primary – phonemes

The national reading tests will soon be upon us and whilst the DFE has given schools a lot of material for them to implement and manage the scheme, it doesn’t hurt to have a few extra fun activities up your sleeve for when the children get weary of the practice. Read More

Primary – Teaching reading in the Early Years

I have used many approaches to teaching children to read in the 18 years of my teaching career, some successful, some not so successful. One of the more unusual approaches I encountered was at University. I was fortunate enough, or should I say unfortunate enough, to find myself in the… Read More