Lympne Primary School

Phonics Screening Check Data

Why have you chosen Monster Phonics as your SSP?

We liked that it was fun and engaging and that the scheme’s progression was supported by great books that had more of a story thanks to the adult part.

What made us different from other schemes? 

For us, the biggest difference is how much the children LOVE phonics and how accessible the monsters make it for children who find retention trickier.

What do you like best about the scheme?

 The colour-coding is very clever, children can access words way beyond what they’ve been taught when it’s in the colours and it promotes great conversations about which sounds are in words. I also love that it’s so child friendly!

How easy was the scheme to implement?

 Yes! The website has everything we need and our school consultant Toni was amazing at supporting us and encouraging us to ask questions. The amount of free parent workshops were also amazing at engaging our new families!

How have the children engaged?

Really well, they learnt about the monsters so quickly and the colour coding makes reading so accessible.

What impact have you seen in your school?

Engagement, confidence, fluency and improved data. The staff also are much more enthusiastic.

Do you use the intervention? How is this used in school?

We are lucky to have a member of staff hired specifically for phonics interventions 3 days a week. We make note of the children finding our previous learning tricky and she takes them for short bursts throughout the day.

Do you use the reading scheme? How is this used in school?

We love using the books for guided reading and children take home an MP book each week. They also have access to the eBooks but these haven’t been as popular which is a shame as we think they’re great. We have just got our new non-fiction books and can’t wait to work on these in our guided reading sessions.

Has it been easy to engage the parents with the scheme?

Very, we have run our own workshops and always inform parents about free Monster Phonics webinars. The feedback has been very positive. 

Has the colour coding been used around school to support the children?

KS2 children use it when they discuss their weekly spellings and use the magnetic letters in their reading and spelling interventions. In KS1 we have a word of the day, alien word of the day in each classroom and a ‘passcode’ on the door that the children have to read when they walk through.

We have colour coded signs around the school. In KS1 and EYFS we use colour coding for classroom labels and in lessons when we are modelling writing on the working wall as it’s a great way to get children to segment and think about what they can hear. We have printed the first 200 words poster and put them around the playground, we often see the older children reading them with the younger children.

What is your favourite resource?

The books!

Who is your favourite Monster?

I like Tricky Witch!

Thoughts on future developments

We are very excited about the KS2 comics so thank you for those! Thank you for coming up with such a fresh child friendly approach to reading!

Teacher quotes

The children absolutely love the videos for the new sounds and always ask to watch it again.

The continuity and repetition of how the activity is laid out with the time machine and plurals means that the children have grown in confidence and independence as it is familiar to them.

Abi Manktelow, Year 2 Teacher

I love the 200 words to learn, this has particularly helped my year 3 class with spelling words that they use every day. As I (and the class) have not followed the scheme from the beginning, it has harder to know the precise teaching techniques for the individual sounds and although children can identify the sound and the right monster,  the children struggle to pick the right sound for the word. I hope that as the children from KS1 will have learnt the scheme from the beginning, this will follow up into KS2. I have adapted the monster sounds into my weekly spelling tests by identifying the sounds in our spellings and using this as a teaching technique and sending these home to parents has helped them to use the sounds with their children.

Natasha Durham, Year 3 Teacher

Although we still dot and dash our sounds the children now focus on the colours which have supported some of our less able spellers.  It has made the older children more aware of the sounds they hear, especially as they missed so much retrieval learning of spellings in year 3 and 4 because of COVID-19.

Viv Curtin, Year 6 Teacher