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Occasionally teachers write to me to ask, ‘Where is the planning?‘ for the Phonics International programme and No Nonsense Phonics (Skills). This has happened a number of times so rather than keep repeating the answer to individual teachers, I thought

It’s truly heartwarming to build relationships with people working with one’s phonics resources and suggestions who love using them, where children love them and succeed with them, and the children’s parents and carers are appreciative – and everyone ‘says so’.

This is my personal opinion based on my personal experiences, observations and reflections … At long last, the Department for Education (England) and Minister of State for School Standards, Nick Gibb, have published a substantial guidance document for the teaching

I wrote about this issue at some length via this blog, and I provided a live webinar which was recorded and is now available to view via my handwriting site. My original post does not need repeating, but the news

The impact of the Phonics International programme by Rachel Hornsey – June 2021 Our school vision, which is a thread running throughout our curriculum, is: “We work to provide our children with strong foundations on which to build their lives

I’m frequently asked if I can provide the name and contact details of people in schools that are using one (or more) of my systematic synthetic phonics programmes. It may seem strange to refer to using ‘one or more’ of

IMPORTANT UPDATE JAN 2022: Abigail Steel and I have now recorded a webinar discussing this issues around ‘matched reading books’ – this refers to the scenario in England and it includes references to research: Micromanaging Matched Reading Books Webinar In an

After nearly a year of behind-the-scenes debate with the Department for Education in England with regard to whether the DfE should persist with the idea of producing a ‘revised Letters and Sounds’, at last it has been accepted, and indeed

January 2021: This is the second post in a planned series of posts specifically linked to teaching the foundations of literacy and raising standards of literacy for all children. I hope you’ve managed to read the first post to set

As I start to write this post, I hardly know where to begin. The ‘Naked Emperor‘ story theme could not be more apt for the information I am about to relay. I think a little bit of my history is

I’ve observed the rapid growth of teaching Reception and Year One children (the four and five year olds) a form of font which is neither a simple, sensible ‘print’ nor quality teaching of joined handwriting. This is instead of teaching

At the time of writing this post (January 2021), we are in the midst of a pandemic. The UK has gone into yet another ‘lockdown’ and many schools are closed or open only to the children of key workers and

In England we have a ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium’ which is Government Funded. All state-funded schools are eligible for pupils’ catch-up premium from Reception to Y11. Full information is available on the gov.uk page – click HERE If you are

This post is very important indeed. As anyone who follows me on Twitter may know, I, and others, have been very critical about the work of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) for some considerable time. The EEF actively undermines the

I made the acquaintance of Steve Mol via the internet. He has been very responsive and encouraging over a number of years. Here is some information about Steve and his work: Steve has always been fascinated with the English language.

Raising standards of foundational literacy in the English language is a team affair – and an international team at that. Within that bigger team, however, there are some stand-out individuals who understand the issues which continue to hold back research-informed

For PART ONE of this topic, introducing Jacqui Moller-Butcher and her work and worries about ‘look-alike reading’, click HERE. The harmful legacy of multi-cueing and its evolution into look-alike reading – a secondary school perspective by Jacqui Moller-Butcher, June 2020

PART ONE: I’ve never met secondary English teacher Jacqui Moller-Butcher but I’ve known of her since she first raised worries about her observations of ‘look-alike reading’ in an online discussion via the blog of popular KS 3 blogger, David Didau.

Background to this guest post: I received a lovely thoughtful email from Katreena which was of course wonderful to receive – so I invited Katreena to write a guest post for my blog. I’m very grateful that she was willing

IMPORTANT UPDATE JAN 2022: Abigail Steel and I have now recorded a webinar discussing this issues around ‘matched reading books’ – this refers to the scenario in England and it includes references to research: Micromanaging Matched Reading Books Webinar This post

Over the many years that my husband David and I have provided resources, information, guidance and training, David has constructed various websites – and then, poor man, he has to keep re-constructing them because of advances in technology – phew

Anyone who knows me appreciates that I consider myself to be first and foremost a ‘practitioner’, that is a very, very practical person! It was years of being a teacher, tutor, mother, special needs teacher, headteacher, teacher-trainer, phonics consultant, educational