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 to do so and with full support from her school’s headteacher.
Katreena’s original message:
Hi Debbie,
I hope you are well in these very strange times. I wanted to let you know that Floppy’s Phonics has been a godsend for many of my parents. When we knew that the school was going to close we decided to give parents access to the interactive resources and the children have responded brilliantly. They have completed their sessions each day and we have sent them a copy of the activity sheet too. One child in my class was so amazing at ticking and circling her words and explaining this process to her mum. She could probably teach phonics when she comes back!
I am so pleased that we chose Floppy’s Phonics for my school.
I just wanted to let you know about a good news story in these difficult times.
Kind regards, Katreena
My school’s early journey with the Floppy’s Phonics programme
My name is Katreena Heywood and I am an Early Years Lead and teacher of Reception at Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Cheshire. Through my other role working as a Literacy Specialist for an English Hub, I was introduced to the Oxford Reading Tree Floppy’s Phonics programme (Oxford University Press). I was fortunate enough to attend two days training with Debbie Hepplewhite learning all about the programme and its design and was intrigued to see it in action for myself. The school which I support as a Literacy Specialist had chosen to adopt Floppy’s Phonics as its new systematic synthetic phonics programme and in a very short time saw its impact. Working closely with the teachers over a number of months it was clear to me that this should be the programme for my school.
We started to use Floppy’s Phonics in January 2020. Having already gone through a term using our usual programme, Letters and Sounds (DfES, 2007), we began by assessing where the children were in terms of their grapheme/phoneme correspondence knowledge and reading of simple words. We used the assessment sheets from Floppy’s Phonics which really helped us to see where to start. We realised that we needed to go back further than we had thought we would need to because the children had not retained some of the newest grapheme/phoneme correspondences taught.
Very quickly, it was clear to us that the children were able to engage with the learning using both the Floppy’s Phonics online platform and the Activity Sheets. From Day 1 the children joined in with all the activities in session 1, getting plenty of practice orally segmenting and blending words. Even the most reluctant children joined in by the end of the first week quickly getting used to the routine which remained the same each time. The Activity Sheets for session 2, took us a week to ‘train’ the children in small groups on how to complete them and then they were away!
Soon my day to day groupings grew into quicker, confident learners who could work independently from the start with me checking their work quickly and then moving onto the Cumulative Texts. My next group needed more of my support to get going but were capable of practising themselves with me only checking their work after they had had time to work on their own. My slower, less confident readers needed more support initially but we also did a pre-teaching session with them in the morning before the whole class session. This was literally going through the activities with them so they could then work independently too. After week 3 these children, too, were able to access their own practice using the Activity Sheets and following the routines.
We did however have to have a fourth group of children who had already fallen behind from our initial Letters and Sounds teaching. These children went back to the beginning of the alphabetic code because they were unable to segment and blend. My experienced teaching assistant worked with them and was absolutely amazed that after only 2 weeks they were able to read the simple words on the Activity Sheets. Their progress has been slower and they have had more support with extra flashcard sessions but I am convinced that they would have been more able to keep up if they’d started out on their reading journey with Floppy’s Phonics.
Year 1 have had a greater challenge by starting Floppy’s Phonics partway through the year. The teachers have had to adapt to a new way of working and while still learning themselves teach the children. However they too have seen great improvement especially in their weaker readers. Plenty of time for them to practise and revise what they have already learned has really helped those children who were weaker at segmenting and blending. The Activity Sheets at this stage have the alternative spellings for the sounds alongside each other which enables them to practise these alternative graphemes and make that connection easily. The quick to learn children have enjoyed learning the new vocabulary and challenge this presents to them. The Cumulative Texts have given them lots of practice too.
It is still early days for us as a school and we were about to embark on our meeting with parents and the introduction of the Floppy’s Phonics ‘book-bag routine’ but the closure of schools stopped us in our tracks. However giving the parents and children access to the online platform has enabled many children to continue to learn phonics. I’ve felt reassured that the children have been able to follow the routine taught in school at home with their parents’ guidance. Parents have sent feedback in the form of notes, photos and videos to back this up. The only unfortunate thing is that not all parents and children have engaged with home learning. I know once we return to school, however, we will be able to quickly use the Floppy’s Phonics assessment materials to see where the children are and pick up their learning from there.
