A Practical Guide to Synthetic Phonics

Every child reading by the age of six

Featuring:
The low-down on the synthetic phonics debate The evidence for synthetic phonics: The Clackmannanshire study Tips and advice for putting synthetic phonics into practice in the classroom

Trust Pearson for Phonics

Here at Pearson weve been making phonics resources for many years; working with top experts to create the very best books, software and teaching support. Weve done this as Longman, BBC Active, Rigby and Heinemann, and thousands of you have trusted our Rigby Star Phonics, Fun with Phonics, and Fast Phonics First programmes to give your children the best start in reading. Last year, we poured all of our primary literacy experience into Bug Club, a brand new reading programme for the modern age. A programme that gives children the choice of reading on page or on screen, and inspires them to learn with characters that theyve encountered on T.V or in books theyve had read to them at home. Its a programme underpinned by rigorous pedagogy and teaching support for planning and assessment. It sets a gold-standard for primary eBooks; weaving fun quizzes into the text to make reading more fun while showing teachers how well each child is progressing. And because we believe that good reading begins with a solid foundation in phonemic awareness, Bug Club begins with a dedicated phonics strand. Phonics Bug gives you whole-class teaching software featuring CBeebies video clips and games linked to reading, spelling and writing as well as an array of pupil games and activity sheets for consolidation. And of course, lets not forget the most important part the books. There are 134 fully decodable books to choose from, including 30 stories about the popular CBeebies Alphablocks characters. Plus there are hundreds of books in the rest of Bug Club for children to move onto. Theres a lot of talk about the governments plans for synthetic phonics in the press and probably the staffroom too. This Practical Guide simply aims to shine a light on the debate, and look at what policy changes might mean for you. If you think there are areas of your (or your schools) phonics teaching that could be improved, weve got some top tips and practical advice to help you focus your attention. And forgive us that weve also tried to show you how Phonics Bug can help you along the way! Best wishes,

Caroline Derby Publisher, Primary Literacy

Analytic versus synthetic phonics

Analytic phonics: In analytic phonics, letter sounds are taught after reading has already begun, children initially learning to read some words by sight, often in the context of meaningful text. In order to teach the letter sounds, whole words sharing a common initial letter sound are presented to children, e.g. milk, man, mother. When all of the letter sounds have been taught in this way, attention is then drawn to letters at the ends of words, then in the middle, in consonantvowel-consonant (CVC) words. Therefore children learn about letter sounds in the context of whole words. Synthetic phonics: With this approach, children are taught letter sounds before they are introduced to books. After only a few sounds have been taught children are shown how these sounds can be blended together to build up words. For example, when taught the letter sounds /t/ /p/ /a/ and /s/ the children can build up the words tap, pat, pats, taps, a tap etc. Most of the letter sound correspondences, including the consonant and vowel digraphs, can be taught in the space of a few months at the start of their first year at school. This means that the children can read many of the unfamiliar words they meet in text for themselves, without the assistance of the teacher. By contrast in analytic phonics, whole words are presented and pronounced by the teacher, and the childrens attention is only subsequently drawn to the information given by letter sound

There is more to reading than phonics but there is also a weight of evidence that systematic synthetic phonics, taught in the first years of a childs education, gives children key building blocks they need to understand words, underpins childrens attainment of a good standard of reading and can inspire a lifetime love of reading.
Nick Gibb

For and against synthetic phonics

The government believes synthetic phonics should be the first strategy for teaching children to read, above and beyond other methods of teaching. Many teachers, experts and policymakers agree, but there are still many who dont. Lets look at the debate
Out of context? Reading without understanding? Jaded by Janet and John

One of the main criticisms of synthetic phonics is that it teaches reading outside of meaningful text, removing the option for the child to use context to work out what a word might be. Proponents, however, point out that children quickly move on to apply their skills to real texts. Although children do start learning about sounds before they are introduced to books, they dont have to learn all 44 phonemes before they are allowed to pick one up. On the contrary, there are books available through programmes like Phonics Bug that enable them to start reading when as few as eight phonemes have been learned. Once children have had practice with a given group of phonemes, they ought to be able to step across to normal books of a similar level. And because they have learned to recognise and blend sounds regardless of their position within a word, they are able to read independently very early in the learning process, giving them the confidence and motivation to continue.

Another criticism centres on comprehension. There is a feeling that while synthetic phonics does rapidly teach children the skills to decode almost any word, they wont necessarily be able to understand them. Yet this is not borne out by the evidence, which shows that comprehension is in fact boosted along with word reading and spelling ability. Once a child has learned the basic skill of using letter sounds to pronounce words, in the early stages they are able to use their existing language skills to understand text.

One size fits all?

Many teachers are worried about adopting a single, one-size-fits-all approach. The research, however, shows that synthetic phonics really does seem to work for (nearly) all. The Clackmannanshire study revealed very few underachievers, despite the fact that around half of the sample came from areas of deprivation. The study also showed that the method worked very well for boys, who were slightly ahead of girls in reading comprehension at the end of P4 (Year 3), as well as enabling older children with delayed language development to catch up. (See more about the Clackmannanshire study on pages 4/5).

Finally, there is the feeling in some quarters that phonics isnt a very enjoyable method for the children, with memories of rote learning and contrived the cat sat on the mat-style phonic readers clouding opinion. But with a good phonically based reading programme in their armoury, teachers need not worry about synthetic phonics being boring. Things have moved on a long way since Janet and John. The whiteboard offers opportunities for multimedia, interactive learning. Children can learn about sounds with their favourite television presenters and practise blending by dragging and dropping letters across a virtual magnetic board. Furthermore, being phonically sound does not automatically mean that a book will be stilted or uninteresting. Phonics Bug includes a great range of colourful, engaging, 100% decodable readers to enable children to get started.

Phonics Bug is part of the wider Bug Club reading programme. In Bug Club, all of the Early Years books follow the order of Letters and Sounds so that children are able to read them with minimal assistance. All of the books are matched to the Phonics Bug teaching units and are levelled by phonic phase as well as book band.

The OECD conducts an assessment of educational performance in schools every three years. The survey results for 2009 were released in December 2010.
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Top 30 countries for reading 1. China: Shanghai 2. Korea 3. Finland 4. China: Hong Kong 5. Singapore 6. Canada 7. New Zealand 8. Japan 9. Australia 10. Netherlands 11. Belgium 12. Norway 13. Estonia 14. Switzerland 15. Poland 16. Iceland 17. United States 18. Liechtenstein 19. Sweden 20. Germany 21. Ireland 22. France 23. Chinese Taipei 24. Denmark 25. United Kingdom 26. Hungary 27. Portugal 28. China: Macao 29. Italy 30. Latvia
There is more to reading than phonics but there is also a weight of evidence that systematic synthetic phonics, taught in the first years of a childs education, gives children key building blocks they need to understand words, underpins childrens attainment of a good standard of reading and can inspire a lifetime love of reading. The Government is determined to raise the standard of reading in the first years of primary school so that children can master the basic decoding skills of reading early and then spend the rest of primary school reading to learn. The fact is that alternative methods have left too many young people with poor literacy levels, especially among children of more disadvantaged families, and we are determined that every child can read to their full potential.

Phonics, phreedom and phunding

When youre looking for a succinct and incisive summary of educational policy, Pearsons Primary policy watch is a great place to start.
Few people with an interest in primary education will have missed the new governments passion for early reading. Michael Gove and Nick Gibbs determination to raise reading standards was given fresh impetus by the most recent PISA results, which showed England falling from 17th to 25th in the reading rankings, with all four UK countries turning in average performances at best. Gove and Gibb are clear in their belief that phonics is the answer. Speaking on a recent visit to a London primary school, Nick Gibb was unequivocal:

Advice on choosing an effective phonics programme

Firstly, the DfE has updated the phonics section of their website, revising the core criteria that they believe define the key features of an effective systematic synthetic phonics teaching programme. Publishers of phonics programmes have been asked to demonstrate how their programmes match the revised criteria. Schools and early years settings should assess their phonics teaching requirements and ensure they have an effective phonics support programme in place. And, just in case you were under the illusion that this was a suggestion, not a directive, the white paper assures us that Ofsted will enhance its inspectors expertise in assessing the teaching of reading, so that their judgements reflect appropriate expectations and recognise particular features of systematic synthetic phonics teaching.

Phonics screening check

Secondly, the government has launched a consultation on its plans to introduce a new reading test at age six. Michael Gove, in a recent speech, described the proposed test as a light-touch phonics-based check which will provide reassurance that children in Year 1 have learned this important skill, will enable us to pinpoint those who are struggling at an early age and will give them the help they need before it is too late. The screening check, as proposed, will focus solely on phonic decoding. It will consist of up to 40 phonically decodable words and nonwords of increasing difficulty. The suggestion is that it should be administered and marked by an adult known to the child being assessed, probably the Year 1 teacher or the literacy

While the coalition may be keen to give schools more autonomy and freedom in many areas, where early reading is concerned theyre keeping a tight rein. Indeed, the schools white paper explicitly stated that as this is an area of such fundamental importance, we will go further than in any other area in actively supporting best practice. In the weeks since the publication of the white paper, the nature of that active support has become clearer.

Find out more about what makes a good phonics programme on page 12-13

coordinator. Children who dont pass the test at the end of Year 1 should be given extra support, and then asked to retake the test at the end of the autumn term of Year 2. Parents will be told whether or not their child has reached the expected level. It is also proposed that school level results from the screening check should be made available through RAISEOnline, but not published as part of the school league tables. The screening check has, unsurprisingly, generated a substantial number of column inches in the education press (the first TES of 2011 welcomed us to the year of ploob, of dar veng spunch and grint yurk pronk). Michael Gove believes that It will be impossible to drill for and will be a true gauge of a childs reading skills. Many people, including some phonics experts, are less convinced. Greg Brooks, emeritus professor at Sheffield University and a long-standing phonics advocate, has been particularly vocal in his opposition to the test, describing it as horrendous and a vast waste of money. He believes it will inevitably cause teaching to the test, leading to children who will be able to jump through these decoding hoops but not make much progress in reading. Ofsteds Christine Gilbert disagrees, believing that a test for six-yearolds should not only prioritise reading for primary schools, but should also enable early support to be given to schools who are finding it difficult to get all their children reading. Julie McCulloch Policy Manager Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning

At a glance
The introduction of a reading check for six-year-olds to make sure that all children are kept on track. The provision of funding to help schools implement the synthetic phonics approach through the adoption of a high-quality synthetic phonics scheme and training for staff. Reform of teacher training to include synthetic phonics, and training of Ofsted inspectors to recognise features of phonics teaching. Sharing results of the new reading check through the RAISEOnline database.

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Dr. Joyce Watson

Prof. Rhona Johnston

Seven years in Clackmannanshire

Phonics Bug authors Joyce Watson and Rhona Johnston are the duo behind the seminal Clackmannanshire study into the effectiveness of synthetic phonics. Their seven-year study showed remarkable, long-lasting results for those children taught to read using the synthetic phonics method, and is one of the main pieces of research cited by the pro synthetics phonics movement.

There has been much debate in recent years about just how children should be taught to read. The phonic approach, whereby children are shown that letter sounds are a guide to the pronunciation of words, has a long history. While in England it gave way for many years to a sight-word approach to teaching reading, it was re-introduced in the late 1990s via the then DfEEs Progression in Phonics. In Scotland, the analytic phonics method had always been retained as a part of the reading curriculum. However, we found in a study (Watson, reported in 1998), that the pace of teaching analytic phonics had slowed down considerably, and the practice of teaching overt sounding and blending was diminishing. As a result, although they got there eventually, children were falling behind the expected results for their chronological age until somewhere in their second year, with boys struggling more than girls. It was interesting, therefore, that in a class where the teacher introduced sounding and blending all the way through unfamiliar words early on, the children made much better progress than in the other classes. This led us to look at synthetic phonics, where sounding and blending is taught right at the start of reading tuition, before an initial sight-word vocabulary is established. This method was already being used in other European countries such as Austria, but it had been thought that the number of irregular spellings in English made it inappropriate for use in the UK. Our initial studies, however, revealed that even when controlling for speed of letter-sound learning, children taught by the synthetic phonics approach learnt to read words much better than those taught by the typical analytic phonics approach.

These pictures are from the BBCs Words and Pictures series, featured in the Phonics Bug whole class teaching software.

The Clackmannanshire Study

We wanted to see if synthetic phonics teaching was effective when implemented by class teachers, and to examine whether teaching children phoneme awareness skills without a link to letters was beneficial for their reading and spelling development. So in 1997 we began our study in Clackmannanshire the results of which have been highly influential among policymakers. Altogether we studied 304 children in 13 Primary 1 (Reception) classes in Clackmannanshire. Our interventions began shortly after the children started school at around the age of 5. We divided the children up into three test groups, in order to compare synthetic phonics teaching with a) a standard analytic phonics programme, and b) an analytic phonics programme supplemented by a phonemic awareness training programme. As the groups could not be equated on social class given the available sample, the children from the most deprived areas, who had the worst prognosis, were placed in the synthetic phonics condition. All groups received their programmes for 16 weeks, with breaks for half-term and Christmas. Analytic phonics only group: Four classes were taught about the relationship between letters and sounds using an analytic phonics approach for 20 minutes a day. As was customary, they learnt letter sounds at the rate of one a week, introduced in the initial position of words. Analytic phonics phonological awareness group: Four classes carried out a programme where in addition to analytic phonics teaching for 10 minutes a day, children were taught how to segment and blend spoken words at the level of both rhymes and phonemes, without the aid of print or letters, for 10 minutes a day. They also learnt letter sounds at the rate of one a week, introduced in the initial position of words. Synthetic phonics group: Five classes of children were taught by a synthetic phonics approach, sounding and blending for reading, and also segmenting for spelling. The lessons lasted for 20 minutes a day. They learnt 6 letter sounds every 8 days in initial, middle and final positions in words.

Astonishing results
At the end of the 16 week training period, the synthetic phonics group was reading words around 7 months ahead of chronological age, and was 7 months ahead of the other two groups. The synthetic phonics groups spelling was also 7 months ahead of chronological age, and was around 8 to 9 months ahead of the two analytic phonics groups. In order to gain an exact measure of whether the gains the children experienced from the Primary 1 programme were maintained, we continued to follow these childrens progress in word reading, spelling and reading comprehension right through to Primary 7 (Year 6). We found that for word reading and spelling the gain in skill compared with chronological age increased significantly over the years, even though the training programme had ended in Primary 1. In Primary 2, word reading was found to be 11.5 months ahead of chronological age, and by Primary 7 it was a spectacular 3 years 6 months ahead. Reading comprehension was also significantly ahead of age expectations at this stage. Overall, we concluded that a synthetic phonics programme, as a part of the reading curriculum, has a major and long lasting effect on childrens reading and spelling attainment. Their continued strides ahead of expected ability suggests that learning to read through segmenting and blending gave children a selfteaching technique that they were able to use throughout their reading education.

You can read the full study and see the evidence online at www.phonicsbug.co.uk

Then and now

To implement the synthetic phonics teaching in Clackmannanshire, we taught children to sound and blend letters for reading, and to segment spoken words for spelling, using magnetic plastic letters on individual magnetic boards, as our method emphasises children carrying out these procedures for themselves. The teacher also used a large magnetic board to explain and discuss the principles to the whole class. These days our fully specified daily lessons are available for teachers as part of Phonics Bug combining our structure and pedagogy with the best of technology for added engagement. Indeed the prevalence of technology in todays classroom allows for a much broader spectrum of multisensory activities to consolidate childrens learning than was possible during our study. On-screen games for reinforcing letter sound learning, reading and spelling are great for helping even the slowest and most reluctant learners keep pace. We were delighted when we were asked if we would like an electronic implementation of the programme, and as Phonics Bug was being developed we could see that it would add to the engagement children already felt with a synthetic phonics programme that worked very well. We feel it is also an aid for teachers, as the daily lessons are very much easier to implement. For example, once the new letter sound for the day has been introduced, all the words needed for reading and spelling are available at the click of a button. There is also material containing the newly taught word in phrases and short sentences, which can now be further reinforced using Phonics Bug decodable readers to support their development of fluent and automatic decoding. The daily lesson plans not only provide the resources needed for the lesson, but also show how to link the phonics lessons to the motivating electronic games, the photocopiable masters and the decodable readers, all of which can be used with the whole class and also for consolidation with slower learners.

Ten top tips for teaching synthetic phonics from Rhona and Joyce
1. Children need to be active participants, blending and segmenting words for themselves. 2. Children like structure, and a clear lesson plan with short discrete steps that engage their attention. 3. Breaking the lesson into discrete steps is likely to be particularly beneficial for slower learners. 4. Plenty of praise and reinforcement of learning activities is beneficial for all children, but particularly so for slower learners. 5. Preparation and forward planning is essential. See Phonics Bug Teaching Guides. 6. Primary Schools should plan for all their teachers to be trained in the research-based synthetic phonics approach. 7. Develop childrens abilities to listen and concentrate during the whole class phonics lessons. 8. Make provision for children learning through collaborating in group interaction. 9. Transfer of learning is important. Encourage children to practise and apply decoding skills in other areas of the classroom. 10. Use regular informal formative assessment observations to note the progress of any child who may be needing some support.

Key features of top-quality phonics teaching according to the HMI report:

Opportunities for pupils to apply learning Active participation by pupils Planned structure and fast pace Praise, reinforcement and evidence of progress Focus on developing childrens capacity to listen, concentrate and discriminate between sounds Appropriate use of well-structured resources Frequent and detailed assessment

How the best schools do it

The HMI Report Reading by Six: How the best schools do it looked at the practices of 12 of the best-performing schools in the UK in order to identify some areas of best practice.
Its overarching conclusion was that successful schools have in common a rigorous and sequential approach to developing speaking and listening and teaching reading, writing and spelling through systematic phonics. However it also stressed the role of the teacher stating that the diligent, concentrated and systematic teaching of phonics is central to achieving high reading standards in Key Stage 1, and requires high-quality and expert teaching. While many hard-working teachers may take umbrage at any suggestion that their teaching is not already expert, the report acknowledges that teachers are only human and highlights the need for high-quality resources and professional development training to assist them in making every second of every lesson count.

With Phonics Bug all of the planning and provision of resources is done for you so you can focus on how to teach, not what to teach.

Putting it into practice

Whither Letters and Sounds?
A common response to the governments announcements around synthetic phonics seems to be: How is this any different to what Im already doing with Letters and Sounds? Thats a good question. The previous administrations Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics documentation provides a good, solid framework for teaching using the synthetic phonics methodology. And in schools that have successfully adopted this approach and are reaching the outstanding benchmark, there may be no need for change at all. However, Letters and Sounds is largely just a framework, with virtually no resources built-in. As such, the onus is still on the teacher to create their phonics lessons themselves. This means that Letters and Sounds is only as good as the resources available within each school. If this is a mixture of resources from different programmes and sources, the lack of cohesion means theres a greater chance of gaps in the teaching, while the teachers job in pulling together lessons and assessment is made considerably harder. There is also the question of fidelity to one approach. As teaching methods float in and out of fashion with successive governments, it may be that some schools use a mixture of different, possibly contradictory approaches, to teaching reading. Further reflection may be needed for example on how the multi-cueing approach of the Reading Recovery programme sits with synthetic phonics. At what stage and in what circumstances should each method be used? It seems then, that the difference for some schools will be in the degree of their adherence to the synthetic phonics approach, as well as ensuring the preparedness of their staff to deliver it through the provision of both high-quality resources and training.

So what does it all actually mean for you?

Theres an awful lot of advice about, as well as broad-brush statements about what makes for good phonics teaching. Over the next few pages we look at how you can put into practice all of the recommendations from the HMI report and Rhona and Joyce.

Planning a structure
There is plenty of guidance already available for creating a basic structure for teaching systematic phonics. Letters and Sounds provides a recommended order for introducing phonemes, while the content of Phases of progression can be found in Guidance for practitioners and teachers on progression and pace in the teaching of phonics (Primary National Strategy, September 2006). So far, so good - but from here it gets a little more complex. Thought must then be given to the teaching sequence (revision of previous phonemes, introduction of new phonemes, practice, application and assessment), the split between Phoneme sessions and Language sessions, the balance of aural, visual and kinaesthetic activities, and opportunities for active participation and group interaction. On top of which you need to think about daily time allocation and classroom organisation, and find or create resources to support each element of your planned structure. Or you can invest in a programme that does it all for you

Planned structure and fast pace

All of the experts agree that a fast pace is crucial to the success of synthetic phonics. It keeps children engaged and ensures they rapidly reach a stage where learning can be enriched by contextualised reading experiences. Without a planned structure the pace of learning will suffer and parts of the programme may be missed or undersupported. A good structure relieves the pressure on the individual class teacher to plan, and enables teaching assistants to be more involved.

Appropriate use of wellstructured resources

The HMI report frequently makes reference to the importance of high-quality teaching resources in helping teachers do their jobs more effectively: The best of products available were so well structured as to take much of the burden out of planning, giving teachers time to think about how to teach rather than what to teach. Phonics Bug is a 100% match for the new revised criteria for effective synthetic phonics programmes from the Department for Education, (see pages 1213). It combines the best books, software and media; alltied into a careful structure devised by Rhona Johnston and Joyce Watson. With 134 fully decodable readers, video clips from the BBCs well-known Words and Pictures series, whiteboard activities for teaching pronunciation, blending, spelling and writing, fun pupil games and photocopiable activities, and excellent assessment resources, all fully supported by teaching guidance to help you run your lesson, youve got everything you need in one package.

are full of opportunities for children to have a go, whether its coming up to the whiteboard to blend words together or play fast-paced games, or using magnetic letters to read and spell their own words.

children can not only practise their decoding skills, but develop their comprehension and discussion abilities at the same time.

Independent work
Of course the ultimate goal of teaching children to read is to enable them to read and understand a text unaided. Letting children have a go at activities and reading by themselves (albeit with an adult on hand to help if they get stuck) is invaluable in building their confidence. Phonics Bug helps you ensure that the texts children are asked to read are at an appropriate level with linked decodable readers for every unit of teaching.

Applying learning
We all know how important it is to be able to apply what weve learned in order to retain it. How many people learned a language at school but now couldnt even remember the basics because they havent spoken it in years? Applying the learning is the key to ensuring the knowledge is really embedded. A large part of your synthetic phonics sessions should be devoted to consolidation activities be they games you lead the class with on the interactive whiteboard, activity sheets, group reading sessions, or paired work round a magnetic board.

Group and partner interaction

In some of the schools visited, teachers and teaching assistants made excellent use of partner work, one child acting as the tutor before swapping roles with her or his partner. p36, Reading by

six: how the best schools do it During the Phonics Bug sessions, children have the chance to both watch and participate as spectators, they listen to words and structures; as participants, they try them out. While sharing small magnetic boards, children respond to each other, working collaboratively to create words. They learn to adjust the language they use, listen to each other and respond to their partners. The decodable readers provide a great opportunity to read together. Reading with an individual child or a small group, the teacher can encourage children to express opinions and explore, develop and sustain ideas through talk and discussion. The books are designed to be interesting, funny and occasionally thought-provoking, so that

Transfer of learning
In terms of phonics, the best teachers made frequent recourse to phonic decoding strategies when the class encountered unfamiliar words in other areas of the curriculum. p31, Reading by six:

Active participation
Children learn best when they are actively involved in the lesson watching the teacher model a skill and then trying it out for themselves. Phonics Bug sessions open with singing the alphabet song, to get children in the mindset for learning. When a new phoneme is introduced, children are encouraged by the presenters to join in with sounding it out. The lesson plans

how the best schools do it Teachers should encourage children to practise and apply decoding skills in other areas of the classroom. For example, when encountering an unfamiliar term from history, geography or science, they should model sounding and blending the phonemes all through the word.

Assessment sheet 6
Blending and segmenting CCVC and CVCC words Name: A) CCVC
Nonword Blending Notes Nonword Segmenting Notes

Name:
Date:

Unit 1 Phoneme

Put a ring around s in the alphabet.

stib blat brod twop slaf flem swip gluf clum frem B) CVCC
Nonword Blending Notes

crup snig skap speg plon prin drog trub smat gred

Put a ring around s in the words.

pants Stan past spins

3
Segmenting Notes

Write the letters s and S.

Nonword

tond dist fent hong kump pask relt saft musp bink

tund dest fant ting kemp posk ralt suft mosp hink

s S
Pearson Education 2010

34
A01_PBUG_TG_REC_3488_A01.indd 34 29/07/2010 16:50

Putting it into practice

Praise, reinforcement and evidence of progress
Children learn quickly in a supportive, positive classroom. Frequent praise can help keep children motivated and focussed. Praise can be for demonstrating a behaviour or a reading skill the important thing is that it is specific and leaves the child feeling confident and secure. weaknesses. But we all know how hard it is to monitor every child during every session. Independent tasks can give an ongoing indicator of how each child is progressing. It is important to check not just whether children recognise the phonemes they have been taught, but also whether they can use phonics strategies to read unfamiliar words. Reading decodable books together is one of the best ways to see if children are using the strategies they have been taught.

Summative assessment
Close and regular assessment of children as they learn to read is vital if teaching is to match their capacity to learn and if difficulties are to be identified when they first arise, and overcome. Frequent observation is useful, but it is important to carry out summative assessments too. Assessing whether children have retained their knowledge of the names and sounds of letters, and how to write them, will give you a good picture of any gaps in their knowledge. Non-words (words that are phonically regular, but do not exist in the English language), are a useful way to check their knowledge of phonemes and ability to blend all through the word. Phonics Bug has a range of assessments, from wholeclass screeners, to more in-depth checks for specific areas, to non-word tests. And of course, because assessment is only one side of the coin, there are lots of activities and ideas to help children catch up if they are learning at a slower pace than their peers.
* All quotes from Reading by six: how the best schools do it

Formative assessment
Children should be involved in the assessment of their progress and receive regular supportive feedback on their work. The quality of formative assessment and the interaction that stems from it make an important contribution to learning.

Frequent and detailed assessment

The assessment of individual pupils progress, phonic knowledge and skills is sufficiently frequent and detailed to identify quickly the pupils who are failing, or in danger of failing, to keep up with their peers. Effective provision for them to catch up is put in place early and there are high expectations of what all pupils should achieve.

Daily observation of childrens progress will help you monitor who is on track and who needs some swift support to prevent them falling behind their classmates. Each Phonics Bug session starts with revision of previously-learned phonemes, so you can quickly spot childrens strengths and

The Phonics Bug whole-class activities on the whiteboard provide plenty of opportunities for observation, question and answer, and class interaction, so children can learn from one another as well as demonstrating their global level of understanding to the teacher. With their independent reading, children get instant feedback when they answer questions within the eBooks, while their teacher can also see the results of these quizzes at the click of a button.

10

Non-words bonkers or brilliant?

While testing childrens ability to read non-words has been labelled as bonkers by David Reedy, President of the UK Literacy Association, there is method in the madness. While a child might be able to read simple words early on through recognition, they may struggle with more complex words later on if they havent learned to decode properly. Thus, it is important to understand how the child is reading, and non-words are a good way to test this.
If children can read non-words like ceb and knup accurately it shows that they have an awareness of spelling rules that they can apply more broadly, rather than just having word specific knowledge.

Joyce Watson

Professional Development
In all cases, the teachers and teaching assistants knew exactly what they were doing and why. They understood the fundamental principles that lay behind the need for children to know lettersound correspondences and to learn the skills of blending and segmenting to decode and spell words. They knew the sequence in which the lettersound correspondences were to be taught, the way in which different resources should be used and how children were best grouped and managed. They observed and assessed childrens understanding and progress minutely. They used a range of strategies to ensure that all the children participated actively and that learning was enjoyable as well as productive. p28, Reading by six: how the best schools do it [Schools should] ensure that all teaching and support staff receive regular training in developments in teaching literacy Overcoming barriers to literacy, recommendations, Ofsted

Professional Development (PD) is crucial in every profession, but in this age of austerity we know that the training budget is one of the first to be streamlined. In education, where grants are being axed right, left and centre, the choice might be between fixing the boiler, buying some new books for Year 2, or getting some PD for your staff, so how do you prioritise? And with the advisory bodies being killed off in many LEAs, how can you ensure your staff is getting highquality professional development thats both affordable and convenient?

Pearson offers a range of Professional Development options to suit all needs. For Phonics Bug users we run an online twighlight session with expert Elizabeth Nonweiler to help introduce the programme and ensure that all of the relevant teaching and support staff get the most out of it. At just 80 for a ninety minute session for your whole school, the course offers excellent value for money. From the summer term we will also be offering full-day INSET training to drill deeper into the pedagogical issues that affect the teaching of reading skills, and looking at how you can use Phonics Bug to address them. And because (sadly!) not everyone uses Phonics Bug just yet, we can also provide experts for in-school training sessions to talk more generally about the synthetic phonics approach and help you revisit and hone your phonics practice. Or you can attend one of the termly national conferences on synthetic phonics due to start summer 2011. You can find out more about Professional Development at Pearson by visiting www.pearsonschools.co.uk/ primarypd

Online or in-school?
Online PD is a good option. It tends to be cheaper than face-to-face courses, and you dont need to leave the comfort of your staffroom. While online meetings, or webinars, might be a relatively new phenomenon they are pretty easy to set up, and highly interactive and reactive, in a way that a video or book could not be. Its a great way to hear from leading experts and ask them your questions, without stretching the budgets to get them to come to you. Whilst online training offers many benefits, not least in terms of cost, schools may prefer to bring an expert trainer in to their school for the day. This can offer more opportunity to tailor training content to meet your exact needs.

Listen to the Phonics Bug alphabet song free online at www.phonicsbug.co.uk

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DfE criteria

Phonics first and fast It presents high quality systematic, synthetic phonic work as the prime approach to decoding print, i.e. a phonics first and fast approach What should you be looking for: A programme that : is based on synthetic phonics principles provides a structured progression from simple phonemes to more complex grapheme-phoneme correspondences combines teaching consolidation work resources with

What makes a good Synthetic Phonics programme

DfE criteria
skills and covering the major grapheme/phoneme correspondences What should you be looking for: A programme that: Comes with a thorough, well-planned course structure and lesson plans Has discrete phonics lessons that follow the review, teach, practise, apply sequence Phonics Bug begins with the simple phonemes /s/ /a/ /t/ and moves through the spectrum of difficulty towards vowel digraphs and trigraphs. It extends the learning into Key Stage 1 with less common grapheme/phoneme correspondences. Each session is discrete and designed to be used daily.

Phonics Bug is built on the phonics first and fast approach, and teaches children to use phonic strategies as the prime approach to decoding print while not neglecting comprehension skills.

DfE criteria

Assessment throughout It enables childrens progress to be assessed What should you be looking for: A programme that: offers opportunities for day-to-day formative assessment provides regular summative assessments assesses childrens knowledge of phonemes and the strategies they use to tackle unfamiliar words gives advice and support materials for children who need extra help Phonics Bug provides daily opportunities for formative assessment through the revision sections of the teaching session, and observation opportunities from the software games, activity sheets, and decodable readers. Regular more formal assessments are also provided, including real words, non-words and high-frequency irregular words. Advice and activities for children who need to catch up with the peers are also provided.

DfE criteria

Fluent readers by the end of KS1 It enables children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills using a systematic, synthetic programme by the age of five, with the expectation that they will be fluent readers having secured word recognition skills by the end of key stage 1 Daily sessions, moving from easy to more difficult It is designed for the teaching of discrete, daily sessions progressing from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and skills and covering the major grapheme/phoneme correspondences What should you be looking for: A programme that: allows you to progress through the units and phases quickly is tried and tested in the classroom and proven to help 4-5 year olds become confident decoders, comprehenders and writers offers guidance on pre-phonics activities so that children are ready to move into more formal phonics successfully has integrated, frequent assessment to ensure that children stay on track with their learning Phonics Bug introduces a new phoneme every day to ensure that children move swiftly through the programme and become fluent, confident readers. Built-in assessment helps you spot any children who slip behind and catch them up quickly.

DfE criteria

Multi-sensory approaches It uses a multi-sensory approach so that children learn variously from simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities which are designed to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills What should you be looking for: A programme that: makes use of lots of different stimulus materials, e.g. video clips, songs, magnetic letters Phonics Bug starts each session with a CBeebies video clip, to engage them and help reinforce their learning. Songs, actions, interaction with the whiteboard, and work with magnetic letters, are multi-sensory approaches that help all children secure their phonics skills.

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Contact your local Pearson consultant to get 50 off the Phonics Book an appointment with your consultant: www.pearsonschoo

These criteria are available from the Department for Education website www.dfes.gov.uk

DfE criteria

Blending for reading It demonstrates that phonemes should be blended, in order, from left to right, all through the word for reading What should you be looking for: A programme that: helps teachers model how to blend sounds all through the word encourages children to blend sounds together from left to right. Phonics Bug puts blending for reading at the heart of the lesson structure. Children watch a demonstration of blening left toright, then come up to the board to physically push the letters together themselves while saying the sounds to form the word. They also blend letters together every day on their magnetic boards, and are encouraged to continue this approach as they read decodable texts.

DfE criteria

Using phonics strategies to tackle irregular words It ensures that children apply phonic knowledge and skills as their first approach to reading and spelling even if a word is not completely phonically regular It ensures that children are taught high frequency words that do not conform completely to grapheme/phoneme correspondence rules It provides fidelity to the teaching framework for the duration of the programme, to ensure that these irregular words are fully learnt What should you be looking for: A programme that: Covers key irregular words in a structured way Teaches children to use their phonics knowledge as far as they are able, with the teacher talking through the words irregular aspect Provides texts that are at an appropriate level of decoding challenge and that include some irregular words to be tackled with adult support The Phonics Bug teaching sessions include key irregular words and show children how to decode as much of the word as they can, with the teacher talking through the tricky part. Support notes on the inside covers of the reading books reinforce this approach too. Phonics Bug teaches irregular words in a thorough and systematic progression, with opportunities to rehearse and assess them through activity sheets, software games and decodable readers. Phonics Bug covers over 30 irregular high frequency words in Reception and many more in Key Stage 1.

DfE criteria

Decodable readers at every stage It ensures that, as pupils move through the early stages of acquiring phonics, they are invited to practise by reading texts which are entirely decodable for them, so that they experience success and learn to rely on phonemic strategies. What should you be looking for: A programme that: Has carefully-graded texts, so that children rehearse phonemes they have learned and do not encounter phonemes they have not yet learned Has sufficient breadth to allow for choice, and extra rehearsal if needed Phonics Bug offers an enormous choice of 100% decodable readers, with 134 fiction and non-fiction titles, including a series of books around the hugely popular CBeebies Alphablocks characters. The books are all available online as eBooks, too. For even more choice, there are Bug Club books at every level for children to step across to when they have mastered a particular set of phonemes. Phonics Bug and Bug Club are still growing, so children an ever widening array of books to choose from! And, as theyre all available as eBooks online they wont be limited to one or two take-home books at a time. Theyll have a bank of books allocated to them by the teacher to dip into.

DfE criteria

Segmenting for spelling It demonstrates how words can be segmented into their constituent phonemes for spelling and that this is the reverse of blending phonemes to read words What should you be looking for: A programme that: Makes daily links between blending and segmenting Provides plenty of activities to reinforce this concept The Phonics Bug teaching software has daily spelling sessions, where children hear or see the stimulus word and segment it into phonemes. They then blend the phonemes together, reinforcing the idea that segmenting is the reverse of blending.

Bug teaching software online before the end of June 2011. ols.co.uk/consultant or Tel: 0800 023 2723

Ref: PGSP1

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Pearson Primary is home to some of the UKs favourite primary educational resources, including the highly acclaimed Bug Club, Abacus Evolve, Literacy Evolve, Rapid and Rigby Star. At Pearson, we believe that wherever learning flourishes, so do people. So were dedicated to giving teachers and parents the tools they need to help children reach their full potential, whether its through high quality resources, support or professional development.