It’s a hop, skip and a jump away from 2024, when many Australian schools will be adopting systematic and explicit phonics. Literacy consultant & former teacher Lesley Clarke shares her top five tips from 24 years of supporting English schools in implementing government written phonics programmes. A must-read for leadership teams!
Tick-tock, tick-tock…the clock is ticking and there’s geography, life skills, maths and phonics to get through today! Shirley Houston explores how much of the school-day you should ring-fence for teaching phonics.
The NSW Department of Education has put out its third (and hopefully last) suggested sequence of phonemes and graphemes for K-2. We are adding it to Phonics Hero for 2023; here’s what we’ve tweaked to get it classroom-ready!
The English-speaking world is FINALLY coming to a consensus that systematic, synthetic phonics is crucial to learning to read and spell, but when should you stop teaching phonics? When do you move children on from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’? Teacher Shirley Houston discusses.
Synthetic phonics has its own terminology; grapheme, phoneme, vowel team, the list goes on! It’s important that teachers understand and easily recall the key terms.
We’ve listed the 13 definitions your teachers need to know and included a fun phonics quiz along with printable handouts for your next professional development session.
How do you get students to start reading at home before they’re ready for decodable books? Teacher Stephanie Brighton shares her school’s simple, effective (and pocket-sized) solution to bridging the home reading gap, complete with free print-outs.
High levels of engagement and using Phonics Hero continuously throughout the year are the key to success. Account Manager, Michelle Haines, takes you through her top tips on how you can ensure everyone is using, loving and achieving fantastic results with Phonics Hero.
Decodable books/readers are a firm favourite in the UK and are slowly inching their way into Australian and US classrooms. Primary school teacher and phonics trainer, Santina DiMauro, gives teachers a step-by-step guide on how to use decodable books in the classroom.
Over the years, logic, emotion and research have frequently clashed in the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping. Shirley Houston takes a look at the pros and cons of grouping by ability for spelling.
Even with all the enthusiasm in the world, if you don’t know the fundamentals of synthetic phonics, you will trip yourself, and more importantly your child, up in learning to read. Our CEO takes parents through what they need to know to support their child. Look out for the free PowerPoint for teachers to use.
