These are for teaching reading with your class: setting a short lesson on one sound, a weekly report of each child's sounds and reading, running records taken while you listen, and a slide for each lesson you can present or print. Each one is switched on separately, so your school may not have all of them yet.
Set a lesson
A lesson is set on one sound, such as the sh sound, to the whole class or to students you choose. Each child does it as a short sitting of the word games built round that sound. Where a lesson has been written and published for the sound, Pip teaches it first: I do, we do, you do, then three short questions.
- Open the class, then Students and Reading groups. Each group is the children whose reading suggests the same sound comes next.
- Choose Set a lesson for this group. The sound and the children are already chosen. You can also start from Assignments, New assignment and Set a lesson.
- Under A book to read after it (optional), choose a ready book if you want the children to read one after the lesson. Once you have chosen the sound, Anchor books for this sound are listed first where there are any: short books we write for each sound, where every word can be sounded out once the sound and the ones before it have been taught. A phonics specialist reads each one before it is published, and each shows the phase it is written to.
- Choose Set the lesson. It is live straight away, and children see it under From your teacher on their class home and on class devices.
The lesson's own page shows each child as Not started, Partway or Finished. How a child did on the lesson's three questions is not kept for students your school added, so the page shows who has finished. To take a lesson off children's screens, choose Finish it on its page.
The weekly teaching report
Open the class, then Progress and Teaching report. It covers the last seven days.
- What to teach next lists the reading groups in the order our sequence teaches the sounds, with where each sound maps to in your program, Set a lesson for this group and Teacher slide.
- Each child, in name order shows the sound-spellings that are secure and those still being practiced, group by group, the group of sounds they are working on, days read, books finished, what reading aloud to Pip showed, their running records, lessons finished and the words they tapped for help most.
- May need a look lists anything worth checking, in plain words: a sound that had settled and has slipped, no reading this week, fewer than nine words in ten read right, or a lot of words tapped for help.
Accuracy and words a minute from reading aloud to Pip are marked machine-estimated. A computer listening mishears children more often than a person does, so treat them as a rough guide and take a running record where it matters. There are no reading ages, no grade levels for a child and no rankings anywhere in the report.
On the Classroom and School plans, Download as a spreadsheet gives the same report as a file. Each download is recorded.
Take a running record
A running record is taken while a child reads a page aloud to you, on a class device or any screen beside them. Nothing is recorded: there is no microphone on the page, and you mark what you hear.
- Open the child from the class list, or from the teaching report, and choose Take a running record.
- The book they read most recently opens at the page they reached. Choose another of their books, or Page before and Page after, if you need to.
- Every word starts as read right. Tap a word once if it was read wrong, twice if the child put it right themselves, and a third time to put it back.
- If they stopped part way, choose They stopped part way and tap the last word they read.
- Start the stopwatch is optional. If you time the reading, the report shows words a minute from your timing.
- Choose Save this page.
Your marks are kept with the student's reading and shown in the report as teacher-marked, beside the machine-estimated figures. Running records are only kept for students your school added, and only once your school has accepted the updated school agreement that describes them. Until then the page says so and nothing you mark is kept.
Where our sequence maps to in your program
Open the class's Settings and choose your program under The phonics program your class follows: UFLI Foundations, Wilson Fundations, Reading Horizons or Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. The report, the reading groups and the teacher slides then say where each sound maps to in it. Hearing skills also show where they map to in Heggerty Phonemic Awareness.
The whole sequence, in the order we teach it, is at Our sequence. A map shows where the same sound is taught in another program. It is a pointer, and it does not claim the programs are the same or teach a sound the same way. Until a phonics specialist has checked a map against the program's current edition, the page says so.
Teacher slides
Teacher slide opens the published lesson for a sound as slides: the points for you, I do, blending, we do, you do, a few words to write, and the three questions. Present shows one slide at a time for a board, and the arrow keys move between them. Print or save as PDF prints one slide a page. A sound whose lesson has not been published yet says so, and can still be set as a lesson.