Free Resources

PowerPoint slides for supporting information events for parents and carers.

Schools may modify this PowerPoint according to their needs.


Oxford Reading Tree Floppy’s Phonics ‘Teaching Sequence’ – An overview of the programme for leaders and teachers

This is a detailed description of the ‘Teaching and Learning Sequence’ delivered with a two-session approach. It can support teacher training and evaluation of the Floppy’s Phonics programme.


Progress Record for Floppy’s Phonics (editable)

This is a handy, editable Word Document for tracking progress through the programme – for both letter/s-sound correspondences and the phonics skills and sub-skills per child.


Floppy’s Phonics Reading Guidance – download PDF


Setting‐up, and use of, the essential Phonics Folder for every learner

This guidance document describes the importance of setting up, maintaining and sharing a ‘phonics folder’ for every learner.


The ‘Simple View of Reading Model’ and ‘The Simple View of Writing Model’

The ‘Simple View of Reading Model’ was adopted to replace the ‘Searchlights Reading Strategies’ on Sir Jim Rose’s recommendation in 2006. These diagrams will be helpful for training purposes and professional understanding. They help to generate collegial conversations as you reflect on pupils’ reading or writing profiles for your general literacy planning or intervention as required. In the ‘Simple View of Reading Model’, ‘language comprehension’ refers to the levels of SPOKEN language and not reading comprehension. For learners with English as a new or additional language, you can plot the learner twice – once for the mother tongue and once for the English language to achieve a fuller understanding of the learner’s literacy profile.


Debbie Hepplewhite’s model of the three phonics core skills and their sub-skills

This description of the three phonics core skills and their sub-skills will enable you to plan and review the balance of your phonics teaching and also analyse/identify specific difficulties of children who are making slower progress. Use a biro or highlighter to indicate gaps in teaching or weaknesses in learning. Provide additional teaching where gaps in learning are identified.


Reflecting on the ‘Teaching and Learning Cycle’

This is a generic diagram which will help you to reflect on  your routine phonics ‘Teaching and Learning Cycle’ and other features associated with your basic skills provision.

There is a danger of teachers introducing new letter/s-sound correspondences too quickly (either because they feel under pressure to move ahead too quickly or because they are not allowing sufficient time on the time-table to develop their phonics provision – 20 minutes a day is a misguided misunderstanding and is not adequate to cater for all the children’s needs). Provision which is too restrictive may result in missing out on individual pupil practice at word level (for all the phonics skills) and the ‘apply and extend’ at sentence/text level. This means that in reality some teachers’ ‘Teaching and Learning Cycle’ is in danger of being very limited – not sufficiently embedding alphabetic code knowledge and applying and extending the range of phonics skills – reading, writing, spelling – whilst also enriching vocabulary and developing language comprehension. There is a complete ‘Teaching and Learning Cycle’ described in the Floppy’s Phonics Handbooks – please ensure you complete the full cycle routinely with the ‘two-session approach’ whether or not you achieve this in one day or across two days. This may vary from time to time as you use your professional discretion according to your own children’s progress. Of course some children will need more time and repetition than others – and plenty of repetition is built into the design of the Floppy’s Phonics resources and the guidance.


Debbie Hepplewhite’s suggestions for effective and supportive phonics provision and practice

This document may be useful as a teacher’s check list and to support phonics/literacy coordinators in reviewing their school’s basic literacy provision.


Guidance for Phonics Routines

This document lists the recommended phonics routines for the three core phonics skills and their sub-skills and then (in red) includes aspects of the phonics routines to consider for honing practice to a high-quality level aiming for consistency and continuity across the school.


Three Posters for Phonics Routines – Reading, Spelling and Handwriting

These are easy-to-use posters to achieve the same phonics routines across the school – also suitable for sharing with parents.


Poster for teaching incidental phonics for reading

This shows how very easy it is to teach the alphabetic code ‘incidentally’ in any word for wider reading across the curriculum.


Poster for supporting spelling in the wider curriculum

This poster provides the kind of language and practice that teachers can apply all the time to teach and support spelling in the wider curriculum whilst referring to the main display Alphabetic Code Chart (which should be displayed from floor level and easily accessible for the teacher and children).


The Potential of Alphabetic Code Charts and the Two-Pronged Approach to Synthetic Phonics Teaching: Systematic and Incidental

This paper describes the usefulness of Alphabetic Code Charts and the rationale for the Two-Pronged Approach.


A Simple Explanation of the Roles of Phonics and Language Comprehension for Reading and Spelling

This paper might be helpful for teaching assistants new to the teaching profession and for informing parents.


Debbie’s response to specific issues raised by David Reedy (United Kingdom Literacy Association) re the Year One Phonics Screening Check

This paper addresses some commonly-held misunderstandings about the Year One phonics screening check.


Flashcards of Alphabet Letter Shapes in Different Fonts with suggestions for use

Right from Reception children can be made more aware about the notion of different letter styles or ‘fonts’ with some specific activities (see the final page for suggestions).


A selection of posters with some high frequency and tricky words for reading and for spelling:

1)      Useful high frequency and tricky words

2)      High frequency and tricky words SPELLING POSTERS

3)      More tricky words posters 


Debbie’s Phonics Teaching Tips for Incidental Teaching

This paper includes some practical suggestions for ‘above and beyond’ the systematic teaching.