Debbie: Every half term (there are three ‘terms’ in England’s academic year), literacy advisor Carl Pattison endeavours to hold an online meeting with the Reading Leaders from schools using the No Nonsense Phonics (NNP) programme. Most of these schools are within the Flying High Trust (a Multiple Academy Trust known as MATs). Some schools with nursery settings (called ‘Foundation 1’ in England, with the Reception class being ‘Foundation 2’) are beginning to trial ‘Phonics and Talk Time’ in F1. You can learn about our FREE ‘Teeny Reading Seeds’ resources and the two ‘Phonics and Talk Time’ books I have written via this link: ‘Phonics and Talk Time’
During a recent NNP Reading Leaders’ online meeting, Emily Kenny, the ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ (EYFS) Leader from Hucknall Flying High Academy, described with great enthusiasm her findings from trialling both the No Nonsense Phonics programme’s resources and the effect of introducing the ‘Phonics and Talk Time’ resources and approach in F1.
NOTE: In order to help anyone reading Emily’s written feedback below to visualise her references to ‘multi-skills‘ and ‘mini stories‘, flick through this eBook example of the No Nonsense Phonics Teacher Book 2. The No Nonsense Phonics programme provides nine ‘parallel’ Teacher Books for the nine Pupil Books, and the Pupil Books’ content is within each Teacher Book for really easy use of both the Teacher Books and the Pupil Books. You can get a reflection of further NNP resources and activities that Emily mentions via our FREE RESOURCES page for No Nonsense Phonics.
Emily also refers to the school’s ‘Rise and Shine’ Session which you can learn more about via this link: Hucknall Flying High Trust’s Phonics Page
I am extremely grateful for Emily’s heartfelt and heartwarming description of her findings below – sent to me via email immediately following the NNP Reading Leaders’ online meeting. I very much look forward to her more detailed follow-up of the use of ‘Phonics and Talk Time’ at a later date:
‘ Hello Debbie,
Thankyou for your time this evening. I couldn’t quite remember if you had asked for anything specific from me within the network this evening but just whilst No Nonsense was on my mind, I wanted to share how much I value the scheme and if you ever wanted to meet through Teams or online somehow, I would be more than happy to. I find talking easier than writing!
If you wanted any data/assessment figures, I would be able to find time to gather this together for you. I will also send and gather all of my thoughts on the Nursery Talk Time (in a separate email) because this is something that we are developing within our F1 setting. We have really embedded and established No Nonsense over the past three years and now our focus has turned to Talk Time, as last year was the first academic year of trialing this properly. But that is also brilliant and has many qualities that prepared our children for F2 magnificently in the Autumn term. HUGE benefits! This is why we are striving for the development of this in our F1, so we are growing our subject knowledge quickly to get our children off to the best start.
The most important part of No Nonsense that I value is how incredibly dyslexia friendly it is. My dissertation at University focused on the implications of Systematic Synthetic Phonics on learners with a Specific Learning Difficulty, as I had recently been diagnosed with dyslexia throughout my further education. With this diagnosis, I immediately understood why I found reading and writing so extremely challenging and throughout my research, I learnt so many strategies to support and identify children like myself, within SSP. I have taught from Letters and Sounds, Read Write Inc and No Nonsense and the fidelity, rigour and systematic two-day approach within your scheme has made it a joy to teach. I have found that this scheme also supports the children that I teach and most importantly places no ceiling on what our children can achieve and most importantly our most vulnerable, disadvantaged and complex pupils.
The attention to detail throughout makes it a pleasure to teach. From 8:45 until at least 10:15 in F2, is by far the most delightful with our ‘Rise and Shine’ session (each child settles into class with their matching decodable phonics book) and then leading into No Nonsense. We follow NNP up later in the day with a Launchpad additional reading session, a Nursery rhyme of the week, a story of the week and a RfP story (but this is all timetabled for different aspects of the day, to keep that love of early reading embedded throughout the curriculum). So the beginning of the day is definitely the best part!
Within the multi-skills I love that there is the emphasis on a capital letter and a lower case letter and this allows the adult to model forming the code, studying letter families, for example descending letters. We make the difference between a lower case and capital letter explicitly clear and explain why from day one in F2 and through relentless repetition why we use capitals and they can confidently articulate many ways how they are used from age 4. We set incredibly high expectations of correct letter formation to ensure that children learn how to form this correctly and remove that cognitive load (I love that they have no rhyme or picture intertwined in the formation). Identifying the sound within the pictures on the puzzle when finding the ‘odd one out’ continues to support sound discrimination from F1 into F2 and is a basic skill that so many children need, so I love that this isn’t missed after the seven aspects in Nursery. The vocabulary is incredible and we explain to the children the use of synonyms (again from the beginning of F2). One of the more recent examples of this was ‘hut’ from Book 2, and we provide pictorial examples for children to make connections and be exposed to dual coding.
Our children recalled ‘den’ and made the connection between the den and hut that they learnt a few weeks before. I love the use of mug to become mugs and again early in F2 explain the use of plurals, this very early understanding supports the children immensely.
Within the mini-story I love the repetition of say the sounds, the incidental teaching opportunity of words within the mini-story and the rich conversation this can lead to. Within the mini-story I also love how much ambitious punctuation is used. We explicitly point out the use of an apostrophe to show belonging, commas (for a pause), full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and an ellipsis, everything that you include and we teach this by explaining the author’s intent. The children have a ‘duh, duh, duhhh’ sound for an ellipsis and say “this is when the author has something really exciting or dramatic”. With an exclamation mark we use phrases such as “read like a reader” and we practise rereading the mini-story with expression, after decoding. It feels magical that children so young have this passion for reading. Throughout the year, the children include all of this punctuation within their Literacy work. It is incredible for aged 4 and 5. I will attach some photographs and it just goes to show that there is nothing that these children cannot achieve when it is explicitly pointed out to them. Your resources allow this to happen!
With documents such as: say the sounds, frieze cards, alphabet chart and code mats etc, it is so incredibly accessible for us as practitioners and allows us to create learning opportunities within our continuous provision and learning environment. We have adapted some aspects of the multi-skills page to create enhancements within the classroom. They have flashcards also, with phonics games that we have created and they role play teaching No Nonsense Phonics.
We welcome families into school to participate in a ‘live’ lesson alongside their child and we coach them through the lesson, explaining the rationale and importance of each aspect of the lesson. Parents understanding the ‘why’ became really important when we wanted to improve both decodable reading and reading for pleasure at home. This also ensures that they use consistent vocabulary with us in school and that they feel confident enough to support their child at home. We quite literally describe the scheme as… ‘it has No Nonsense’ and explain that there is a code or a spelling rule that once we learn, reading becomes accessible for everybody’ – they love it – and they just get it. The opportunities of this scheme are endless. We do so much more, but unfortunately, I cannot structure this email well enough to mention everything.
I would love to talk all things No Nonsense and Talk Time with you, so please send me a list of everything that you would like to hear about!
With warmest regards,
Emily Kenny ‘
