These two exceprts are the words of Simon Fuller, Curriculum Manager and literacy teacher. I chose them because I think they would surprise a lot of adult literacy tutors.

• The first shows how it's possible to adjust your teaching to accommodate phonics even after many years of using other methods and strategies.
• The second illustrates beautifully how phonics and literacy as social practice can be one and the same.

 Evidence of changes in teaching, learning and assessment practices
'The takeaway for me as an Entry Level 2 literacy teacher has been unlearning everything I had been trying with these learners. No more clever mnemonics (which I now understand adds pressure to working memory), no more ‘helpful’ shortcuts to spelling. What made the biggest difference to my learners is adherence to the prompts thus ensuring learners were consistently practising saying the sounds associated with the graphemes they were seeing (for reading) and breaking words down into their component syllables and sounds for spelling.
I also learned the value of being consistent in asking learners to say the sounds and not letter names so that they stopped the habit of using only visual strategies and instead engaged both their ears and their eyes for spelling and reading.
Learners that previously had no real plan or tools to help them read or spell were now very quickly able to attack words and have a fighting chance of spelling them correctly, regardless of a word’s length.'

Learning from this project
'I am completely converted to using TRT as a one-to-one tool to improve spelling at Entry Level 1 and 2. Alongside the usual literacy classes I think it will allow learners to address their main challenges and enable them to progress into better jobs, help their kids at school and make smarter choices in the betting shop. Adult literacy is about so much more than passing exams and these examples remind us of the importance of literacy for social inclusion.'