Building the Foundations for Phonics: How Parents and Educators Can Develop Vital Pre-reading Skills title with Phonics Family Image

Building the Foundations for Phonics: How Parents and Educators Can Develop Vital Pre-reading Skills by Katie Whitehead

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Early Years educator, phonics specialist and author, Katie Whitehead (known to her followers as Phonics Family), shares her advice for developing vital pre-reading skills. In the UK, conversations about school readiness are louder than ever. The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has declared it a national priority with ambitious targets. For example, 75% of five-year-olds being …

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We Won a Bett Award!

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We’re delighted to announce that Spelling Shed is the winner of Bett’s Primary Digital Learning Product Language & Literacy Award.   What Did the Judges Say?  “This is a comprehensive resource for teachers to support teaching, learning and assessment of spelling. Its assessment tool is effective and reduces teacher workload. Parents can see their child’s learning …

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Images of Spelling Shed's baseline assessments

Using Spelling Shed’s Baseline Assessments

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Spelling Shed has launched baseline assessments, designed for use at the beginning of the academic year. How to Assign Spelling Shed’s Baseline Assessments This handy video shows you how to assign Spelling Shed’s baseline assessments and how to view data. Assigning baseline assessments is easy.  1. Create an assignment like you usually would by clicking …

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Using Spelling Shed alongside your phonics scheme

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Does your Systematic Synthetic Phonics scheme meet the National Curriculum statutory requirements for KS1? Does it prepare your children for the more complex code they will encounter in their reading and writing in Year 3 and beyond? The simple answer is that almost all Government Validated Phonics Schemes do not adequately cover the National Curriculum …

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Top tips for using formative and summative assessment in phonics

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What is summative and formative assessment? Formative assessment •Observation-led – responses to tasks and questions – assessing their input, instigating peer discussions, and completing a review of work covered during the plenary. •Planning prompts – For example, recapping the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) taught, particularly as part of the plenary. Each lesson plan has an assessment …

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Etymology

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How to use etymological information can improve understanding in reading and aid spelling Morphology and etymology go hand in hand and when joined together with orthographical mapping, they become a powerful trio in the learning of spellings.  Other words with Greek origins: dolphin elephant alphabet hyphen triumph How do we use etymology in Spelling Shed …

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Using Actions to Support Your Phonics Teaching

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Why use actions in phonics sessions? •Promotes active engagement and participation – research suggests that the longer a child is actively participating in a lesson, the higher their academic success. •Targets kinaesthetic types of learners – movement •Helps to distinguish between similar sounds •Visual prompt – if a child is unsure of the GPC they …

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Choosing and Using Flashcards to Accelerate Learning in Phonics

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Why flashcards? The scientifically proven best way to learn is practicing recall by spaced repetition. You repeat the process of recall in certain time intervals (every day, every weekend etc.), and that’s how information gets stored in your long-term memory. Spaced repetition indicates that it’s better to learn every day for one hour, than one …

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How to use Orthography to get the Most out of Phonics for Spelling

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What is Orthography? ‘The conventional spelling system of a language.’ ‘The study of spelling and how letters combine to represent sounds and form words.’ (Oxford English Dictionary) High quality SSP ensuring children have a solid foundational knowledge of GPCs The first way we use orthography is when teaching pupils phonics in KS1. We advocate the …

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Year 4 MTC Ready: How to build recall and conceptualisation of times tables with your class

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What is the Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check? Designed to determine whether children can recall times tables facts fluently. Allow schools to identify children who need more help becoming secure in their times tables knowledge, but not specific gaps (sadly!). There is no pass/fail for the test, so no resits required (unlike Year 1 Phonics …

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Using GPC Characters for Engaging Phonics Teaching and Learning

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Why use GPC Characters? Associating the characters with GPCs lends itself to story telling and putting these characters in meaningful contexts, which the pupils can relate to. These characters underpin the whole of the scheme and are referenced in the flashcards, decodable books, lesson plans, interventions, teaching books and formation rhymes. The characters are used …

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What are bar models and how to use them to solve problems

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What are bar models? Where did they come from? Bar models have been part of the Singapore Ministry of Education’s mathematics’ concrete, pictorial, abstract process since the late 1980s. Their origins date back further than the late 1980s, though. They were used as part of the American psychologist and educationalist, Jerome Bruner’s three-part lesson process …

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The best ways to run and prepare your class for the Phonics Screening Check

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About the Phonics Screening Check What is it? A statutory phonic knowledge screening for Year 1 pupils was introduced in 2011/12 in England. It is conducted orally and 1:1 with teacher, usually lasts 5-10 minutes (although there is no set time limit). The test should be done with a teacher that the child knows to …

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How to Plan and Run Impactful Phonics Interventions

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What are the essentials of an evidence-based intervention? Prior Knowledge By activating prior knowledge, teachers help students become ready to assimilate new information. This cueing helps the learner associate new information with previously learned knowledge. Wendling, B.J. and Mather, N. (2008) ‘Donald Hebb who was influential in the area of neuropsychology famously said that “Cells …

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What is meant by mastery in mathematics and how to use MathShed to incorporate it into your classroom

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What is mastery in mathematics? The term ‘mastery’ means pupils acquiring a profound, secure, lasting and adaptable knowledge and skillset in mathematics. You will sometimes also hear the phrase “teaching for mastery” which refers to schoolwide policies and classroom practices that come together to allow children the best opportunities to achieve mastery in mathematics. For …

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