This is a testimonial by Ann Sullivan. Ann has over 30 years’ experience in mainstream and specialist education. Based in the UK, her career includes roles as a KS1 and KS2 class teacher, SEN secondary literacy teacher, school-based Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO), an advisory teacher for pupils with special educational needs and a Specialist […]
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In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** One of the difficult aspects of the English Alphabetic Code is that sounds (phonemes) can be spelled in different ways. For example, the sound /ae/ can be spelled ‘ai’ […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** High-frequency words is another term for common words with tricky spellings, or high-frequency words with “irregular” spellings. The term “irregular” is a bit misleading because while beginner readers might […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** First, what is a word chain? A word chain is a list of words used to develop phonemic awareness skills: blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation. These are the underlying […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Decodable books often include target words that pupils may not know. There are many reasons why pupils may not know words in a text: The word may be unusual. […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Dictation is a great way to consolidate the bonds between reading and spelling. It is a controlled exercise where pupils can succeed because the teacher includes words with spellings […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** One of the most important elements of learning is receiving error feedback (How We Learn, Dahaene). With every error feedback, the pupil can adjust their knowledge or skill and […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Many pupils will have been encouraged to use guessing strategies by well-meaning teachers and tutors, such as guessing clues from the picture or the context, and/or skipping the word […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** Non-fiction decodable books are wonderful reading resources. They combine two essential parts of reading: word recognition (decoding) and world knowledge (language comprehension and subject vocabulary). Educators now recognise that […]
Read More In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** First, what is segmenting? Segmenting is the ability to separate sounds in words. The smallest sounds are called phonemes. We use segmenting when we sound out a new word, […]
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