New Year New Start...and how we can help

Happy New Year 2026!

New Year, New Start……..that’s what everyone says.

As a teacher of many years, I, my colleagues and families have always felt we have two new years,  obviously January 1st but for us, September 1st is also the start of a new year…..a new SCHOOL year.

New classrooms, new teachers, new routines, new expectations, new shoes, new pencil cases (and that’s not just the children!)

It is exciting. There is that nervous excitement, trepidation, curiosity in the air (again, not just the children!) Everyone wondering what is around the corner, everyone thinking about new challenges ahead.

The first few weeks of the Autumn term are hard. Hard for everyone; parents maybe leaving their children for the first time in Reception and just hoping they will settle and be happy, children getting used to those new routines and expectations and hoping they will settle, find friends, do well at school.

And then of course….the teachers. Our job is of course to facilitate learning but in those early days it is about reassuring parents, getting to know our new group of little people, setting those routines and expectations (believe me all teachers know that if you don’t life is hard for everyone!), facilitating friendships and so much more, and this takes time.

Yes, learning does take place but in those early days there are many things to be learnt, not just the academics.

So.

A few weeks in, everyone is settled and we really start understanding where each child is in their learning, what they need to learn next and of course, considering what we, as teachers, are expected to deliver according to the curriculum.  We assess (soft assessment which I will talk about in another blog), we plan, we teach, we repeat.

Then it is time for a very much needed half term break (not just the children).

Half term is a time for us as teachers to reflect on the first half term and plan for the next. Fantastic we think. We know our children. We know where they are in their learning journey. We can now really focus.

EXCEPT.

Halloween, Bonfire Night.

Oh and….CHRISTMAS.

A wonderful time of the year but CRAZY!

We come back to school and have maybe three weeks of focused learning before the excitement begins for Christmas. Shops have started advertising, decorations are going up, Christmas music is being played. Focus is disappearing!

Then December hits. And believe me, whilst I absolutely love the festivities (you should see our house….grotto….at Christmas), it is VERY difficult to teach. Really teach.

The excitement of advent calendars (home and school, getting ready for the Nativity play, making    Christmas cards, Christmas decorations, Christmas lunch, Christmas party…...I could add more but you get the idea.

And honestly? Could you focus when you have reindeer antlers on and are covered in

tinsel?

So the Autumn term finishes in a flurry of excitement and everyone collapses in a heap.

Two weeks off to enjoy the festivities, recharge and then…..NEW YEAR!

This is where I get excited. Not just for New Year itself but actually for the new term ahead. It feels like a new start. A new beginning. And better still, a less cluttered term.

Now is the time for us teachers to really push forward with the children’s learning. The children are happy and settled. Routines and expectations are in place. We know our   children. And in my 28 years of experience I have found that children come back to school that little bit more mature, that little bit more ready. And it is exciting!

Now is the time to really start addressing any gaps (not that we haven’t before but remember….Christmas), identifying further areas that need some additional support.

And now is the time to consider if your child needs any additional help with reading, writing and phonics.

Here at Flourish we offer both 1:1, paired and small group tuition at very competitive prices. We will    assess your child’s needs and a personalised learning plan will be created. We pride ourselves on making the learning fun and interactive and we put your child at the centre, ensuring we are also helping to build their confidence and a love of learning.

Please do contact us  on 07526 425653 for further information.

Or drop us an email  at info@flourish-reading.co.uk

Phonics: An Alphabetic Code!

You may, or may not, remember your early years in school, but I am sure most people have a memory of learning the alphabet; a is for apple, b is for ball, and singing the alphabet song. Maybe you even remember that frieze that wound around the classroom!

Now, there was nothing wrong with that….I myself learnt to read in that very same way. BUT….years of studying, looking at children’s development and progression, and case studies have shown us that teaching children to read is so much more than just learning the alphabet. After all, we’re looking for our children to get a better education than us, right?

We need to adjust our thinking from the 26 letters of the alphabet to an alphabetic code consisting of 44 phonemes (phone = sound).

I have always found this fascinating and hadn’t really thought about it until it was pointed out! Now, I absolutely love exploring words and especially love teaching phonics. The key is to teach it very systematically and look for opportunities when reading to point out phonemes that the children have been learning and give them meaning. As children develop their phonetic awareness and ability to both hear the sounds (phones) and recognise them in the written form (graphemes - graph meaning visual, like in graphics),  we can then start to explore what we call the alternative sounds.

In many words, we combine letters to make digraphs (di = two). For an example of alternative digraphs, we would generally teach ‘ay’ (as in day) before looking at ‘ai’ (as in rain). We would play lots of games involving sorting words and noticing the patterns that we discover. Can you spot a pattern?

ay	ai
day	rain
say	train
play	brain

You got it! (Hopefully - I'm not in the room with you to verify that).

‘ay’ is usually at the end of words.

‘ai’ is usually in the middle of words.

Once this is secure we would then start looking at the split digraph a_e as in cake (which I learnt as the magic e!), but that can wait for another time!

Challenge time! Can you come up with any words that use 'ay' in the middle of a word? Comment some rule-breakers for us! Children LOVE a rulebreaker.

The Power of Picture Books - Recommendations!

For today's blog, I wanted to share with you some of my absolute favourite books, whilst also hopefully dispelling the myth that picture books lose their value once children start reading.

First, the power of pictures! Celine Dion missed an educational opportunity, I think, when she wrote 'The Power of Love' instead, but we can't all be reading focussed like Flourish, so we'll let her off. Pictures are an incredible part of a reader's toolkit, and, when they're present, they provide an enormous amount of context and clue-finding opportunity for our readers to gather more information about the story/text.

They're more than that, however. They are also inspiration. They are the depiction of something that words can perhaps not quite capture. They express an emotion, a situation, or a complex interaction in a way that might take page upon page of description and scene building. Have a look at this picture from the unbelievably talented Shaun Tan's 'The Red Tree', in which the main character of the book is having a really, really bad day and feels awful about everything (before eventually finding hope and joy):

The above picture evokes so many subtle emotions that we can barely do justice in words alone. Notice the deep, dark sky, how she is trapped in a bottle that is slowly filling up with rain that is directed specifically at her. Notice the blue sky being pushed away from her and the diver helmet that isolates her from her peers. The page has but two words on it, but to a reader, it captures hundreds more for us to digest and enjoy. Here's another, different picture:

What can you see here? What feelings is she experiencing? Where is she? What might that floating object represent? Is it a scary or wonderful object? How do you know?

The questioning and evidence finding you can encourage children to do here is unparalelled, and deeply important to their progress as readers. More than that, though, these books are inspiring, moving and teach us more about the emotional mind than we might even preconceive.

Thus, my advice is as follows: Look at Shaun Tan (and a range of other similar authors!) and start a journey of unbelievable power; the power to find, to imagine, to love and to feel. Reading has never been this good.

Some recommendations of books from Shaun Tan: