PHONICS SHED SUMMER SCHOOL OFFER

Phonics Shed also aims to foster a love of reading and writing through its strong, character-based, and original narratives and with engaging, multi-sensory activities. Joe is the first character the children will meet, and he is a key figure throughout the progression who acts as a guide from the very beginning, right through to the later chapters.

Throughout Chapters 2-4, there are 110 phoneme-grapheme correspondences (including upper and lowercase letters, double letters, digraphs/trigraphs, and more advanced phonemic patterns) covered in the progression, each having a unique character linked to it. Additionally, the characters have their own supporting stories, decodable readers, songs, and associated actions (physical movements) to aid with consolidation.

The 26 letters of the alphabet have upper and lowercase characters, each with an easy-to-follow letter formation rhyme to support the children's writing. The same characters are referenced throughout the curriculum and are known as 'special friends' to the digraph and trigraph characters. They appear on most of the digraph/trigraph flashcards, and often in their stories, to support consistent letter formation and to reinforce that they sometimes work together to help to represent certain sounds.

The Phonics Shed phonics program has been designed with all learners in mind. We believe that by following the program as intended, it will cater for diverse learners with little adaptation.

The curriculum is split into four chapters, each of which has various subsections called Elements or Sets. Each Element or Set has daily 30 minute lesson plans that can be followed as is, or repeated and stretched out as needed. The structure is the same throughout all lessons and a copious amount of differentiated activities are included.

• This structure can be beneficial for all learners as all children can enjoy the experiences of whole class activities, such as stories and rhymes, before working at a level at which they can manage independently.
• The curriculum is taught and practiced through multi-sensory activities, and each lesson plan includes differentiated activities, making the program more accessible for diverse learners and needs.

This design makes lessons very easy to implement and creates flexibility to meet the needs of diverse learners. Each Element or Set also includes intervention lessons for each of the regular lessons, and there are also numerous supporting physical and digital resources. All of the physical resources are available as digital versions as well.

Each lesson set includes a chart of suggestions of how to extend the skills beyond phonics sessions and integrate cross-curricular activities into the classroom. The numerous additional activity suggestions add flexibility to the lessons, making it possible to complete the lesson set in a week, or stretch it out longer instead, depending on students' needs. Lessons can be implemented in a whole group setting, in small groups (including centers), or in one-on-one sessions.

Blending and segmenting practice is supported by a range of High-Frequency Words (HFWs). Decodable HFWs are linked to specific phoneme-grapheme correspondences and partially decodable words (Heart Words, which we call 'Buzz Words') are integrated at appropriate times throughout the lesson progression. These HFWs give children access to a wider range of texts as they account for up to 50% of school-based texts. As the children work through the program, they are also exposed to decodable alien (nonsense) words, helping to distinguish HFW knowledge from blending and segmenting abilities.

To support our physical curriculum products, we have made digital editions available. Guidance, training videos, and documents can be accessed through the Phonics Shed Digital Hub.

There are supporting videos for every phoneme-grapheme pair, demonstrating the correct pronunciation of the sound, the formation rhyme, and how to perform the supporting action. The dashboard also has electronic versions of our teaching and decodable books that can be displayed digitally or can also be freely explored by children when they visit the digital bookshelf in the Phonics Shed Garden. Children can be assigned decodable reading books and comprehension quizzes online and our internal tracking system will record their answers and progress over time.

Our assessment tools, tracking data, and games are all accessible online for home or school use. Our digital tracking system allows you to note the conclusions drawn from observational assessments, quickly and effectively, and our games provide performance data that help to provide more clarity of students’ abilities. The games track each child’s performance and give teachers additional information on their activity and acquisition of skills. Assessment data can be input manually into the data reporting system, and there are also printable versions of assessment tracking available. The Phonics Shed data system assists to inform your planning, enabled by the flexible and targeted nature of the Phonics Shed program.