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Grow the Code

Grow the Code is a new web app that covers the first four years of phonics instruction using the Smart Kids Letters and Sounds systematic synthetic phonics programme. Over 500 daily lesson plans will advance children through:

  • oral blending
  • blending for reading
  • segmenting for spelling
  • alternative spellings
  • suffixes and morphology

Retain fidelity, with detailed guidance that progresses along side the daily phonics lessons. Revisit, Teach and Apply with sentences for dictation and over 250 fully decodable books. An online assessment allows you to monitor each class and individual child's progress.

Daily Phonics Lessons

High quality phonics teaching whilst reducing teacher workload. All your core resources, planning and preparation are taken care of.

  • Fully customisable settings. Choose between sassoon (on the left) or primer font. Choose between photo (on the left) or illustrated mnemonics.
  • Select your phase, then choose your letter-sound.
  • Revisit previously learnt letter-sounds and tricky words before practising reading words using the new letter-sound.
  • Animated formation of lower and upper case letters.
  • Children can then apply their new knowledge with a caption for dictation and a fully decodable reader for practise.

Letters and Sounds Progression

Grow the Code follows our DfE validated progression:

Growing the Code 

Alternative spellings are gradually introduced at phase 5. When revisiting the letter-sounds all previously taught spellings are shown, reinforcing and building on knowledge.

Guidance

Teacher guidance is delivered systematically to simplify your job.

Segmenting for Spelling


  • Select the  tab at the top to be taken to segmenting for spelling activities for each letter-sound.
  • Drag and drop the letter-sounds to make words matching the pictures. 

     

    Applying knowledge

    For each letter-sound there is:

    • A caption or sentence for dictation.
    • Fully decodable online book (over 250 books in total).

      Assessment


      • All children can quickly be assessed using the online assessment tool.
      • Results are recorded and sorted and the bottom 20% of children are targeted for extra keep-up lessons.
      • Children can easily be assigned to a new teacher when moving to another year group.

        Try out our amazing web app with a 14 day FREE trial here.

        FAQs

        Which font should I choose?
        Sassoon is recommended for use with dyslexics.
        Primer is more similar to the font used in New Zealand schools
        Which type of mnemonic should I choose?
        Photo mnemonics (e.g. snake for s) are great for dyslexics and SEN.
        Illustrated mnemonics offer an image that follow the same shape as the letter to help with formation and recall.
        What is systematic synthetic phonics?
        Also known as structured literacy and the science of reading, systematic synthetic phonics is an evidence-based, structured approach to teaching children to read. 
        • Systematic: teach systematically in an order e.g. the letter s followed by a then t then p.
        • Synthetic: to synthesise individual phonemes, from left to right all through the word.
        • Phonics is hearing and identifying letter sounds and matching them to their letters or letter patterns. e.g. ‘ai’ makes an ‘ai’ sound.
        What is a GPC?
        GPC stands for grapheme phoneme correspondence. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa. A phoneme is a unit of sound and a grapheme is the way a sound is written. In the Grow the Code guidance GPCs are refered to as letter-sounds.
        What is a trick word?
        These are words that have one or more unusual letter sequences e.g. is, the, people

        Note: the first tricky word taught is included with the lesson for /i/. Further guidance is provided on how to teach tricky words before this lesson.

        What are speedy sounds?
        After you have revisited previously learnt letter-sounds as part of your daily phonics lesson you can click on the speedy sounds button. This will only show the letter-sound, not the mnemonic.
        What are speedy words?
        After you have read through words using the focus letter-sound as part of your daily lesson plan, you can click on the speedy words button and only the words will show without the sound buttons.
        Why do some letter-sounds have // on either side of them?
        This means that the letter-sound is one of the 44 sounds in the english language. The alternative spellings of these sounds do not have the // beside them. e.g. /ai/ ay, a-e, ey, eigh, aigh.