SSP Ambassadors

I am 21 years old and currently studying PGCE Early Years Education at Edge Hill University. I came here for my BA (Hons) ‘Children and Young People’s Learning and Development’.
I have a passion for inclusive practice, and supporting pupils and students to reach their full potential. I became a SSP Student Ambassador due to it being a new area of interest for myself. I aim to make it less scary for trainee teachers, like myself, through supporting others to become the best that we can be!

I’m a third-year Primary Education student. I have a passion for inclusion and hope to support as many children as I can to believe in themselves and achieve great things.
I am an SSP Ambassador because I truly believe early reading skills and phonics enables children to communicate, express themselves, and achieve across the curriculum. 
Many trainee teachers find Systematic Synthetic Phonics daunting and I wanted to offer support and share my ideas! 

I am 20 years old and I am on the BA (Hons) Primary Early Years with QTS course and I am a SSP SA because I want to learn more about phonics and how we can support children to the best of our abilities. 
 
I have worked in numerous settings so it is exciting to be able to share my knowledge with others!

I first came to Edge Hill University in 2019 when I started BA (Hons) Education. After completing the second year of my degree I started working in a nursery, where I soon realised that I enjoyed working with children in an early years environment. This is where I decided to apply for the Primary Early Years PGCE with QTS, which leads me to where I am currently.
SSP was a new area of interest when starting the PGCE course, and while learning more about SSP, I would like to share ideas, as well as raise awareness of the importance of SSP.

I am in my second year of Primary Early Years Education with QTS at Edge Hill and have been an SSP Ambassador throughout my first year too.
 
I became an SSP Ambassador so that I would learn more about the subject myself, but also to support others in developing their knowledge around it and help take away the fear factor of phonics so we can make it as fun as possible for children.

I am currently on the PGCE Primary Early Years with QTS course. I became an SSP Student Ambassador because I wanted to make SSP less scary and daunting for students who have little experience of it.
During our SSP lectures I have witnessed students leaving the sessions feeling anxious and scared after being introduced to the new concepts and terminology associated with Systematic Synthetic Phonics . A lot of information is passed on during a lecture, which can sometimes be too much to process. However, if the concepts and terms were introduced in smaller chunks, with examples, and explained from the perspective of another student, it could help them feel more at ease. This is what I hope to achieve as an SSP SA.

My name is Hanifa Nkeze and am currently undertaking PGCE Early Years Primary. I am proud and privileged to be a SSP Ambassador for Edge Hill University. I have an immense passion for teaching SSP (for 2 years in reception class) so much that I would love to share my passion, experience and share ideas with other students about how teaching to teach Systematic Synthetic Phonics. I would love to encourage students and help them to realise that SSP is not as daunting as we all think it is!

I am a student of PGCE Early Years. In the past I worked with children (one-to-one or in a small groups) as a Phonics Intervention TA. 
I loved my job; I enjoyed it, and I was dedicated to it. As a future practitioner I am interested in SSP teaching. Looking across multiple programs, the advantages and disadvantages in SSP teaching, the outcomes in different age groups; but also, I am interested in alternative approaches to phonics teaching. 

In the future, while working at school I would like to undertake the role of phonics lead if possible.

Second year primary education (5-11) had my 1^st year placement in reception and here I saw the importance of phonics.
 
I decided to become an SSP ambassador due to seeing the impact of phonics within the EYFS and how children need this in their day to progress and develop not only their reading but also their speech.
Seeing the impact on what the pandemic has had on the children’s reading, writing, spelling, and speech is extremely heart breaking. By having well-structured and well utilised phonics lessons allows the children to develop these needed skills, I feel that by empowering and supporting teachers, teaching assistants, student teachers and leads within a school on the importance of phonics is something we should do with great power and responsibility as its children’s futures that are being affected. Having the correct lesson plans, support, resources, and scheme to follow are all major parts of developing children within phonics.