Feedback from Debbie's No Nonsense Phonics Skills Series

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debbie
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Feedback from Debbie's No Nonsense Phonics Skills Series

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Please see this page with full information about my 'No Nonsense Phonics Skills Starter Kit', published by Raintree. This page includes video footage, a PowerPoint for quick review and an audio-video of the PowerPoint with further information and training:

https://phonicsintervention.org/no-nons ... cs-skills/

This kit was launched by Raintree Publishing in September 2016 but our new 'Phonics Intervention.org' website was only launched in January 2017. It includes links to my more recent articles and to a new blog.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

It's so great to receive this feedback from an infant school in England that has recently had an Ofsted inspection. The school has adopted the No Nonsense Phonics Skills programme as its preferred material and approach for phonics and foundational literacy:
Also, I just wanted to let you know that we had some special visitors at the end of last term…!

Ofsted came, 2 days, 3 inspectors, and we were judged outstanding in all areas. Phonics was a line of enquiry on Day one but after watching our staff teach with NNPS it was judged to be very high quality and a strength of the school.

We are beyond proud of the judgement, especially under the Sept 2018 framework. Thank you for being a very important part of that judgement.
This flyer includes the Year One Phonics Screening Check results of the school over several years - note the leap since introducing my approach - same teachers, same context:

http://phonicsinternational.com/Hub_Flyer.pdf
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Use of the No Nonsense Phonics Skills series in Australia

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I received permission to share this private message with others but on the basis it is anonymous as these are exploratory days for using the 'No Nonsense Phonics Skills' series and the reading debate is fierce and contentious in Australia!

Hello Debbie,

Thank you so much for getting back to me with such immediacy. Our staff are very grateful!

We have managed to use the NNPS resources over Remote Learning and we are seeing some very pleasing results, despite the interrupted year. Our teachers delivered NNPS instruction via recorded video lessons on a daily basis, and the parent response was extremely complimentary. It ensured that our Prep children, particularly, were given the best possible start to their schooling in what has been an unconventional, unprecedented year.

Because the mandate from our [educational authority] still dictates running records and benchmarking be collected and submitted as assessment (yes, using predictable texts 😣), we recently took some Running Records on our junior children and what we are seeing is very promising.

Our junior teachers noted (with complete joy) that their young students are now relying on the words. They're not looking at pictures and guessing. In other words, they're actually reading.

They're using their developing knowledge of the alphabetic code to decode, and it is glorious. We still have a way to go, and evaluating our approach based on 2020 is impossible given the circumstances, but we are so pleased by what we are currently seeing.

You may remember from our discussions that our school, along with one other in our area, and our Education Officer, have been working to transform literacy instruction in our schools based on evidence and research. You will be pleased to know that it is gaining traction with other schools and we are steadily receiving calls asking about our experiences from those embarking on an examination of the evidence. Schools are steadily choosing to tread a path that is vastly different from our advisory body, given that [our advisory body] is still heavily whole-language focused. It's a long fight, but we are making ground, even if the steps are tiny and at times it feels as though we are wading through mud.

I wonder if you might be interested in one of our data sets? Our group decided that we'd administer the Year One Phonics Check to all students Prep-6 at the beginning of the year, just to get an idea about where all our students sat in relation to the application of phonics knowledge. We knew it took only minutes to administer and were curious about what we'd find. We were, in a word, shocked, by the results.

We have since implemented SSP (systematic synthetic phonics) across the entire school, and this is the result of our latest Phonics Check, administered upon return from Remote Learning 2.0. Interestingly, the Grade Two students reaching the threshold were in the class of one of our graduate teachers last year. She and I (as her mentor) worked on implementing SSP as an action research project in her classroom last year. All other Grade Two students who didn't reach the threshold did not receive SSP instruction last year. Again, we still have a way to go, but we are so happy with the growth we are seeing.


In relation to getting our older children up to speed, we still used NNPS (as requested by our teachers), we just moved at a much faster rate than our Juniors and placed significant focus on the language and processes in each classroom. We had intended not to use NNPS for our older students from next year, but our staff has requested a similar implementation plan as this year. We are mid-planning on that, though, so we are unsure exactly what that will look like come 2021.

Thank you for your interest, Debbie.

We are thrilled to be on the journey and we know our kids will benefit greatly.
Responding to requests from parents and tutors to provide the 'No Nonsense Phonics Skills' Pupil Books as 'single' copies rather than just in packs of six, we now do this and we have a page dedicated to information for parents here:

https://phonicsintervention.org/parents-homeschooling/
Last edited by debbie on Sat Jun 19, 2021 3:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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Post by debbie »

As part of a thread on 'handwriting' via Twitter, this was a great comment to read:

I’m finding @debbiehepp ‘No nonsense phonics skills’ excellent for supporting my daughter. Letter formation, blending and segmenting all in one spot and ready to go! It’s excellent and making quite a difference.
:D
Debbie Hepplewhite
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Post by debbie »

How it's possible to mix and match when it's my rationale and ethos underpinning all the resources and provision - this is not the same as 'pick and mix' when Twinkl and PhonicsPlay are used to equip Letters and Sounds schools!

I knew they were wrong about PI - we have used it for many years and I'm always recommending it to people. We've been a Floppy's Phonics school since 2011 (Abigail Steel trained us 🙂). We removed all non-decodable reading scheme books at that point, which further demonstrates that the auditor didn't know what he was talking about. We're absolutely loving No Nonsense Phonics, by the way, it's having a huge impact on those children whose learning was affected by lockdown.
Last edited by debbie on Sun Jun 20, 2021 6:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by debbie »

Here is some update information - new ready-made resources for the No Nonsense Phonics Skills series and the first half of the Phonics International programme. These additional hard copy resources are published by Phonics International Ltd in 2020 to 2021:

http://phonicsinternational.com/forum/v ... php?t=1159
Debbie Hepplewhite
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