Which phonics curriculum materials did you choose and why?

I'm advising a couple of schools on what materials to buy for us to teach with. All of the systems seem lacking in different areas but I'm not familiar enough with all of them to make a good decision.

In general, these are just some of the problems I've found.

Letters and Sounds:

- A wealth of materials but it's aimed at native speakers, relying on kids knowing what things are from their pictures.

Jollyphonics:

Book materials for the first stages have a a bit of a blind spot for the end of words in my opinion. I have to counter for this. The stickers are great but too expensive to use seriously IMHO. I prefer to have kids blending earlier.

Letterland:

I like the early rime and suffix support. Occasionally great for girls but It's all a bit childish for 5 year old boys addicted to video games...

Oxford Phonics:

Simply too much text on the page for younger kids. The approach is good and it would be great for adults but it's just too much on the page IMHO for kids younger than 9.

RWI:

Looks good. Seems to mesh pretty fine with other systems but it's so commercial and I'm sure that'll cause problems at some points.

Floppy Phonics etc: Not sure. Trialling it.

Twinkl:

This is my favourite since I can just try Letters and Sounds materials as I need rather than buy books and find they suck later on. However, even Twinkl has a lot of weak spots IMHO. Designed for natives. Weak on the end of words IMHO. Not enough stuff with vowels and too much focus on single letters IMHO. Interactive part is a bit weak. Personally, I also find it hard to navigate the website and find exactly what I want through searching alone since it's so massive.

I could do with a separate map to navigate phonics materials.

Now there's online and gamey stuff. This stuff seems to be quite separate to traditional books. It's good but I find it hard to bridge the gap sometimes between tech and non tech and stay organised.

Online game stuff:

I quite like PhonicsHero because of it's clear organisation. They're teacher friendly too and given a pro tech environment it could be the best we have now. I use it just for reference to be honest, without using the games so much. The schools here are very anti tech. The virus has changed this so maybe things are different now. Worksheets for anti tech parents, ipad for pro tech addicts. I suppose it can work. I use it in this way but it's inconsistent. Parents here just expect to have a book, not an app.

Other stuff like PhonicsBloom, Spellingcity, animphonics... helpful support but I don't find it systematic enough. No use of rime etc is a bit rubbish IMHO. Monsterphonics, again looks parent centric rather than aimed at teachers.

Submitted September 20, 2020 at 10:44PM by After-Cell https://ift.tt/3iPHcRn