See: https://thinkingreadingwritings.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/are-grammar-schools-the-best-way-to-address-social-mobility/ You may think that providing disadvantaged children with the opportunity to attend a grammar school – supposedly resulting in a more academic education – would go some way to ad...

What should be assessed and how at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage? In England and Wales, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is from birth to the year children are five on 31st August and they are assessed by the middle of July that year. For most children, this means they have had ...

When they start learning to read, nearly all children have decoding skills that are too poor for developing comprehension or an interest in reading through what they themselves read. Those of us who promote synthetic phonics have repeated many times that the solution is for adults to read to them a ...

This article states the obvious, but it is not obvious to those who have been brain-washed - as I was once - about how to teach reading. In fact, it is correct that reading is about getting meaning from print. However, it is not about getting whatever meaning you choose from the print, but about get...

Does repeated reading of the same text help children learn to read well? The National Curriculum for England states that children should be taught to read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge ... and re-read these books to build up their fluency and confi...

Year 3 Phonics Screening Check Pilot https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/588735/Phonics_Ad-Hoc_Final.pdf This report shows a lack of understanding of the importance of the Phonics Check and how to ensure children learn to read well enough to succeed with it. I s...

I am just checking whether the technology is working for me and I can send a message.

The new website will include more about Book Bands.

Yes, a very special man.

“Decodable books” are books the reader can decode. The term is usually used to mean the books in a reading scheme where the levels are structured according to how easy it is to decode the words, using a phonic approach. The terms “Look and Say” and “Whole Word” are usually used to mean a method of t...

A talk was given as part of a project I am involved with. One of the speakers promoted choral reading. She said choral reading is good "after children have acquired basic phonics skills". Do any readers have experience of using choral reading or know about evidence for or against the use choral read...

This is what we would expect. There is strong evidence for the following recommendations: - Develop awareness of the segments of sounds in speech and how they link to letters - Teach students to decode words, analyse word parts, and write and recognise words A new What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) prac...

Thank you for all this work Jenny. It is interesting and helpful to know that the Phonics Check results correlate with the other measures of success with reading and writing, including reading comprehension.

The English National Curriculum states: Pupils should be taught to read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words. These children were clearly being asked to read books that were not "consi...

" B Is for Book " on BBC 4 at 9 p.m. next Tuesday and 3p.m. next Wednesday. Documentary following a group of primary schoolchildren over the course of a year as they learn to read. Some of them make a flying start, but others struggle even with the alphabet. The film takes us into their home lives, ...