Phonics for Adults

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy |

This post was written in response to the first viewing of the DfE’s subject content document for Functional Skills English reforms published in 2017. I wrote it with no idea that I’d be involved in the creation of the ETF’s Post-16 Phonics Approaches. It’s a joy to look back at my “ideal world of phonics for adults” and see that we managed to fit quite a lot of it into the toolkit. ******************************** My biggest fear about formalising phonics with … Read More

Poverty, Culture & Education

posted in: Thoughts on Education |

Edited February 2020 Eugenics has shown up on my Twitter feed again, this time due to Andrew Sabisky’s appointment as a Downing Street advisor. When I wrote the original blog post, the idea that intelligence and class are related came up in the context of a Guardian article about whether or not ‘talking more to your baby’ will boost the child’s intelligence. Professor Dorothy Bishop wrote a critical response from her researcher’s perspective which included the possibility that a child’s … Read More

Functional Skills – Phonics at Entry Levels

posted in: Phonics for older students, Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Resources and Lesson Ideas |

As I travel around the FE world I’m hearing that people have looked at the Post-16 Phonics Toolkit but haven’t necessarily read it. If that’s you, here’s a quick tour based around the chapter people are most concerned about. Chapter 11 is called “Turning the FSE word lists into a learning tool” It encourages FS teachers not to teach lists but to develop vocabulary for both reading and spelling. The chapter is a bit of a beast, but these six … Read More

Post-16 Phonics Toolkit

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy |

The Post-16 Phonics Toolkit It’s been a wonderful experience working with a team of authors with such expertise – both writing the toolkit and creating trainings for professionals in the world of post-16 literacy. There are so many unique settings in the field and the toolkit can flex to work in any of them. It is based on the linguistic phonics principals which underpin both That Reading Thing and That Spelling Thing but it also includes much of the TRT … Read More

Phonics: when singer rhymes with finger

posted in: Phonics for older students, Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Secondary literacy |

I love conversations about how people pronounce words differently and knew I was onto an entertaining twitter thread when I saw a few responses to this tweet. However, reading through the thread made me feel more and more depressed about how people view phonics.  Almost every comment was about whether the girls were wrong or right rather than how we can use what they know to improve their reading and spelling. So here’s my (way too long for Twitter) response. … Read More

Post-16 Phonics in the youth justice system

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Youth Offending |

I’ll be reposting some relevant blog items in light of the launch of post-16 phonics for functional skills in England. Phonics in this context often involves a lot of “unlocking” knowledge the learner already possesses but doesn’t know how to use. Sometimes they need to get past their anger and shame over past school experiences. Here’s one such young person. **************** Why would you work on reading with a young offender? There are plenty of reasons not to. Being in … Read More

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