Using Macmillan Phonics in primary schools

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Alongside KS1 Phonics Programmes
  • If your school is using the Snappy Sounds or Rapid Phonics Programmes
  • If your school is using other phonics programmes
• KS1 Intervention
• Lower KS2
• Upper KS2

Alongside KS1 Phonics Programmes

If your school is using the Snappy Sounds or Rapid Phonics Programmes

Snappy Sounds on CENTURY is designed to be used in collaboration with the Snappy Sounds phonics programme, and can be used to support the understanding of phonics in any classroom. 

The Fast Phonics nuggets match up with the structure of a Snappy Sounds initial sounds lesson and are perfect for consolidation of the sounds you are teaching. The digital readers are designed to be used in addition to or as a replacement for the physical Snappy Sounds decoders. They can be sent home to students and their guardians to practise. You can see as a teacher when the students are completing phonics work at home.

If your school is using other phonics programmes

The decodable readers can be used alongside any existing phonics programme. Using supplementary books like Snappy Sounds for extra practice is widely accepted to increase fluency and confidence. 

• Progression Mapping: Our course guide allows teachers to check the progression mapping against your existing phonics scheme, so that students are assigned nuggets and decoders that only contain sounds already covered in their main phonics lessons.

• Step Matching: Snappy Sounds is structured into eight levels (Levels 1-4 for Reception, and Levels 5-8 for Year 1). Ensure that a nugget is only assigned to a child who has already covered those specific GPCs in their core scheme. 

• Read to Me: To aid with reading for expression and to help students with EAL at home, Read to Me nuggets have the text read aloud with the words highlighted as they are spoken.

KS1 Intervention

Snappy Sounds is frequently used to fill gaps for children who did not pass the Phonics Screening Check or who are struggling to progress in their phonics scheme. You can use these books as a "bolt-on" to support a different, primary, daily phonics scheme and provide different readers for students who have already read through their initial phonics scheme decoders. 

Because all the resources are available online, these decodable readers and the corresponding sound nuggets can be very easily set to students who have missed time in school or who are remote learning.

Lower KS2

In Years 3 and 4, decodable readers plus short online phonics revision can be very effective in securing, extending and automating initial phonics with pupils who passed the Phonics Screening Check, but:

• Are slow and effortful readers

• Struggle with alternative spellings

• Collapse with multi syllable words

The focus for these learners shifts to fluency and accuracy instead, such as by following this process:

1. Use the Fast Phonics nuggets to revisit alternative spellings and split digraphs (especially common vowel teams).

2. Use the decodable readers to practise reading these focus patterns (reading aloud with an adult).

3. Use the Fast Phonics revision nuggets and I Read assessments to practise spellings.

4. Move onto the Year 3 & 4 SPaG courses where you will find corresponding spelling nuggets to both consolidate and assess their knowledge.

Upper KS2

Decodable readers in upper KS2 are useful for pupils who:

• Still guess words

• Cannot blend unfamiliar words

• Struggle with multi syllable decoding

• Read fluently in familiar texts but collapse with new vocabulary

If decoding is still weak at this stage, comprehension work alone will not fix the problem. To support these learners we recommend: 

1. Map common KS2 phonics gaps and set specific nuggets (both the Fast Phonics and the I Read nuggets) to support these gaps.

2. Set the decodable readers as both independent practise and to be used in 1:1 interventions to practise reading aloud with an adult.

In addition, the decodable readers and Read to Me nuggets can be used as standalone support to improve the reading confidence for children with SEND or EAL.