Who we are
We are a small, but dedicated team of teachers and ex-teachers. We have over 50 years teaching experience between us.
Alex who designed the programme and its resources over four years ago was joined by a colleague (Susie), together they have spent the last few years testing it and refining it…..and adding to it.
Isabel, had a 15 year career as a primary school and EYFS teacher but also a long career in the business world: customer services, product management and marketing. Isabel is working hard to ensure we can deliver RoboPhonics to the world now that we have been validated by the DfE. We received the notice on 31 January 2023 and are now working at pace to configure the correct commercial set up.
Why was RoboPhonics created?
After 20 years in the teaching profession, I had witnessed (and delivered) too many ineffective phonics lessons and witnessed phonics scheme after phonics scheme fail for a variety of different reasons.
I wanted to create a scheme that ensured all children learned effectively and I believe this begins with ensuring that every teacher of phonics has the knowledge, skills and available resources to create the biggest impact in a short amount of time.
Teaching phonics with a scheme that is not sufficiently scheduled, resourced and planned is a massive drain on teacher-time and results in teachers delivering lessons that are poorly planned and/or resourced with inadequate pace and challenge and excessive cognitive overload. Or, the phonics lesson is lost to scrabbling around for resources or pushed out for other lessons.
Often, those delivering phonics lessons, especially those new to EYFS and KS1, haven’t had the training and pedagogical input they need to assess, plan and teach effectively. This leads to mispronunciation of phonemes, missed opportunities to help children create links and connections within their reading and writing learning journey or too much challenge with GPCs beyond their stage – built in failure.
I had to do something about this, for my own sake and in my own school. So, in my evenings and at weekends, I wrote my own phonics scheme, ensuring it encompassed all the elements to make it impactful and all the resources to ensure it can be delivered easily. I wanted to make sure I removed all the barriers to successful implementation and delivery to give phonics teachers back their mojo!
Alex Mackay-White (RoboPhonics Creator)