I’ve known Debbie Hepplewhite for 12 years. During that time, she has never failed to impress me with her commitment and passion for getting children the best deal possible. She is prepared to engage in debate at all levels, be it with parents, teaching colleagues, headteachers, government and the media. I was lucky enough to have her working in my school for four years and her impact on the children’s learning was unequalled. She is a fearless campaigner who is committed to challenging present-day dogma. My feeling is that she will succeed in transforming the face of British education.
Susan Fraser BSc, ALCM, BPhilEd.
Primary Headteacher
************
Debbie introduced me to the use of
synthetic phonics to teach reading.
I had been teaching children to use
the NLS searchlight strategy for many years, but I had never
felt confident that my teaching was as effective as it should
be. I was too dependent on the children’s ability to guess
correctly from clues and on the ability and willingness of
their parents to supplement the teaching of reading that
happened at school. I also felt constantly under so much
pressure to comply to the demands of authority, that I never
managed to make time to investigate alternative methods for
myself.
However, by luck, I found myself
teaching at Debbie’s school and was introduced to Jolly
Phonics. I was immediately interested and very quickly
convinced that this was something I wanted to know more about.
Debbie has supported me, trained me and pointed me in the
direction of further learning about how to teach reading and
writing. Everything she suggests about teaching is backed up
by rigorous research and her wealth of personal
experience.
My teaching has been transformed and I
have a much better sense of what I am doing, what I shall do
next and why I am doing it. Above all, I daily see the thrill
in children’s faces when they realise they can independently,
with no guessing, read something they could not read the day
before.
Elizabeth Nonweiler
************
Debbie Hepplewhite became a Jolly
Phonics Trainer several years ago. Her enthusiasm for this
programme was a delight to see. At that time she had never
known a programme to be so effective, especially for that
bottom group of children. Since then, Debbie, like many of us,
has found other programmes that use a similar method of
teaching, and which produce equally high results. All these
programmes have certain elements in common, namely
all-through-the-word blending for reading and
all-through-the-word segmenting for writing. This fast-paced
early teaching of the alphabetic code, before asking children
to read books for themselves, has become known as synthetic
phonics, the letter sounds being synthesised (blended)
together.
Debbie's early teaching experience
as a supply teacher alerted her to the problems that many
children experience with reading and writing. With her new
understanding of the effectiveness of synthetic phonics, she
set out to make sure that everyone knew that there was a
method of teaching that was far more successful than the
flawed NLS. This involved her reading about evidence-based
research, taking over the editorship of the Reading Reform
Foundation newsletter, setting up the RRF web site (with the
help of her wonderfully supportive husband, David), writing
hundreds of letters to people in the DfES, Government, Ofsted,
LEAs etc., as well as supporting worried teachers and
parents. Nobody could have worked harder for the
good of others. Her courage in demanding accountability in the
education world has been admirable. For decades
educationalists, advisers and lecturers have failed to test
their new ideas before promoting them into schools and teacher
training establishments. Debbie's rational and logical
thinking, and her sheer perseverance has largely won many
people over. Best of all, by insisting that only
well tested evidence-based programmes should be promoted by
the education establishment, she will have enabled many more
children to read and write with fluency and enjoyment in the
future.
Sue Lloyd
Co-author Jolly
Phonics
Retired Infant teacher
************
I've taught
both our daughters to read using Jolly Phonics. The elder one
will be 5 in May and went to the local primary in January. We
understood that the school 'did' JP but we didn't probe
enough. It was two sounds a week (which our daughter knew
already), Oxford Reading Tree and lots of guessing.
Discussions with the school reached an impasse, though not
before the head had agreed extremely reluctantly to contact
Sheila Johnson [an accredited Jolly Phonics presenter] whose
school she is going to visit. To cut the story short, they
were simply cross that we'd questioned them and when they
celebrated in our daughter's reading record book her use of
pictures to get a word she couldn't decode and refused our
request to have her read decodable readers, we took her out of
school.
We are trying to get
another school (which is much more open and which is
using JP in a more intelligent way though still with NLS
overlay) to consider going JP fully.
We have given them a copy
of the Clackmannanshire report, but is there any listing of
English schools which are fully JP and any record of their
results so that the school can make a comparison?
I've read many postings
by you on the Reading Reform Foundation website forum and on
the TES one. Thank you for all the encouragement they provide.
I read your recent request for the silent readers to tell
their stories on the RRF forum and will be happy to add ours
if it would be of use.
Incidentally, I contacted
our Local Education Authority and spoke to the Chief Inspector
(primary), an ex-head and hostile to me because I'd dared to
question one of his headteachers. I asked if he'd read the
Clackmannan report; he hadn't. He was unaware of the work at
Stoke Gifford.
I also contacted the
Clackmannan Education Authority and spoke to Lesley Robertson.
They'd had some queries from inside Scotland but not a single
English LEA had been in touch.
Concerned
parent
Name and address
withheld
************
I have been teaching in Year 1 since qualifying 5 years ago. I started teaching with no advice on planning from my school and poor advice on teaching reading and writing from my PGCE course.
I basically stumbled my way through the years, each year teaching 30 children, often with no support. I realised by myself that Progression in Phonics and NLS high frequency words and other methods were inappropriate and confusing for 5 and 6 year olds and that synthetic phonics is the answer. Also, that our jam-packed timetables do not allow time for enough ‘play’ and social development.
I have a Head who is not ‘infant friendly’ in her views and thoroughly endorses NLS and PiPs, with no effective transition from the Foundation Stage, i.e. straight into Year 1 with a full National Curriculum, no play timetabled.
I also ‘stumbled’ upon Jolly Phonics, which I have implemented after a fashion for the first time this year, with improving results, although the reception children are not taught Jolly Phonics.
Debbie’s correspondence to the TES (Times Educational Supplement) website and RRF (Reading Reform Foundation) website have been an inspiration and a revelation to me and have helped me to keep my sanity because she has clarified and supported my own views when no-one else has. After harping on about synthetic phonics and sight vocabulary to our Reception teacher, she has now purchased the JP handbook.
I know that I am a good teacher but the last 5 years have been incredibly hard and I feel for the children that have failed through poor advice (NLS etc.) from the government and PGCE course. I am now looking for a Reception post, where synthetic phonics teaching will be welcomed. (Of course there are very few vacancies advertised and I am lower primary trained!)
But, many thanks, Debbie, for your articles. When I have been at my most disillusioned with teaching, you have kept me going and provided sound advice that I could cling to and devour for the first time in 5 years.
Permission received for publication.
Name withheld for obvious reasons!
************
I worked for
many years as a Literacy Consultant for the National
Literacy Strategy in London. I believed passionately
that what we were doing was going to be for the
benefit of both teachers and children. However, as
time went on it was obvious that despite all the
hard work and good intentions, the hard-core long
tail of underachievement was still there. What we
were advocating was not working.
I visited Kobi
Nazrul school and was knocked out by what I saw. We
had Ruth Miskin over to our LEA to do some phonics
INSET and the teachers who attended were knocked out
too.
The NLS response
to the long tail was a series of intervention
programmes, ALS, ELS and FLS, all based on the
premise that the problem lay with the teachers and
the children, NOT with what we were promoting in our
materials and advice. None of them were tested
before being rolled out.
In the middle of
all this, Debbie sent all of us consultants a copy
of the Reading Reform Foundation newsletter.It was
my light on the road to Damascus!
I had been
"off-message" for quite a while, delivering INSET on
phonics, advocating a synthetic phonics approach,
but without actually realising what I was doing!
Getting in touch with Debbie and the RRF was like
"coming home." I have been amongst friends,
supported, and no longer feeling isolated, ever
since.
Debbie's passion
to get the best, rational, research-based method of
reading into every school is inspirational. I'd be
lost without her.
Lesley Drake
Deputy Head
Newham LEA, London
************
I entered teaching
as a mature graduate in my mid thirties, having
previously worked as a classroom assistant. I was
immensely fortunate to have a wonderful mentor at my
first school. She supported me, advised me and freely
shared her wealth of teaching experience with me. She
was, however, a maths specialist and I knew that my
great enthusiasm was the teaching of reading and writing
skills.
The school had a real book approach to reading and
whilst many children did become happy confident readers,
I was anxious about those children for whom reading held
no delight and was just a puzzling struggle.
I also became aware that quite a large number of those
confident readers when presented with a writing task
required an enormous amount of support to get started
and were very reluctant to even try to spell
independently.
It was about this time that, quite by accident, I came
across a manual called ‘Jolly Phonics’. I read it and
re- read it. I made the sound cards and the support
activities and tried them out with my class. The
children quickly responded and I watched their
confidence grow. I moved school twice and kept using
Jolly Phonics in my Year 1 class.
I discussed the method with other teachers who were
often interested but to my disappointment were not ready
to change their practices. Finally in 1999 I became
Literacy Co-ordinator and in that role I received a
letter inviting me to a Jolly Phonics introductory
evening with Debbie Hepplewhite.
I came away from that meeting fired by Debbie’s
enthusiasm and encouragement. I was in the head’s
office at 8.00 the next morning and by that afternoon
Debbie and I had arranged an Inset day for our entire
staff. The date we chose was to become extremely
memorable as with Debbie’s support and encouragement on
11thSeptember 2001 we decided as a school to
use Jolly Phonics.
We also, at Debbie’s suggestion, decided to adopt from
the Reception class a cursive style of handwriting using
lead in and lead out strokes**. It was hard work. There
were worksheets to change, actions to learn and both the
teaching staff and support staff worked many late
evenings with preparations and explaining the changes to
parents.
I remembered the wonderful work I had observed in
Debbie’s class room during a visit to her Year 1 class.
I knew we could make a difference and we have. The
children in our school now delight in reading and
writing. They approach tasks with confidence and
interest as they know they have the tools to help them.
Spelling is often mentioned as being a ‘best thing to do
at school’. My happiest moments are when I hear one
child say to another, ‘Thats the ‘ow’ sound like in snow
but making its other sound like in cow.’ There is no
panic, the child who once might have waited five minutes
for me to put a word in his word book, now confidently
writes for himself and reads his work back with
enthusiasm and pride.
Caroline Fairbrother
**Note from Debbie: I advate joined writing with leaders but not in a reception class.
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