Testimonials

Launchpad has provided staff across our nurseries with valuable knowledge about the fundamental skills children need to become readers and writers. Equipped with such insight, practitioners are now able to identify more specific skill areas in which they can support children to learn, develop and enjoy early literacy.

Launchpad has been particularly useful for us in developing understanding of the importance of embedding the pre-requisite skills required before moving children onto the next steps. LP is excellent for drilling down to the very specific skills required and how one area of development impacts on other areas. LP has also helped us to identify children who may be ready to move onto using a synthetic phonic approach to reading and those who require more time […]

Launchpad has enabled EYFS practitioners to assess the children in key strands which are pivotal to their early development. This has improved planning and teaching for whole cohorts in addition to SEND children. It has enabled practitioners to find out exactly what children can do and provide next steps. Our focus has been ensuring children in EYFS have the skills needed and are ready for more formal literacy learning. When children have appeared ‘stuck’ with their […]

I had taught in Reception for 15 years before I was trained in the use of LP and I cannot believe the impact it has had on my phonics teaching. Previously we would have ploughed on doing the same thing and got the same results – children not able to blend. The benefits of being able to refer to a document, to enable practitioners to understand and then apply the pre-skills of phonics to their teaching […]

We use LP in nursery to support communication and language skills for our EY children and children not on track in Year 1. Nursery children became more adept at segmenting and blending and has developed the auditory memory of many children in EYs, supporting others with their expressive language.

Our focus children in Yr 1 have developed their auditory and visual skills. It has made Phonics so much more meaningful for them with some of the group now able to read and write simple CVC words as well as orally segmenting and blending words – a huge improvement from their starting points.

Our children start nursery, working well below ARE & have some quite complex needs that specifically require support with smaller steps to learning. LP has supported this greatly. The broken-down skills guide can be used for precision targeting, personalised to the needs of groups and individual children. There is a range of strands within the framework, including vocabulary, auditory, visual, and memory which draw on these direct links with early literacy skills.

The LP small steps and ideas for activities and strategies are great in particular the sequencing for support with CVC words.

We have seen progression with blending and speech sounds and some progress with sentences

Our children in EYFS are ready and able to access their phonics programme and children within the wider EYFS make better than expected progress with smaller gaps.

One of the clearest indicators of LP’s impact is when we compare Reception children who have come through our Nursery using LP with those joining us from other settings – the difference in their readiness and skill development is striking.

We have a large selection of special needs children with EHCP’s & we use it to pinpoint where their gaps are in phonics, to help build on these skills to make them phonics ready.

I believe the listening and attention skills have been embedded prior to phonics.

We use LP with FS1 children and FS2/ Yr1 children who cannot access phonics as yet.

Children leaving Nursery are more “flashcard ready” for Reception & we can hit the ground running with Synthetic phonics, due to our strong, consistent teaching using the LP skills framework.

Our reading and writing were highly praised by Ofsted in our inspection in May 2025. The way we teach is quite precise and individualised – LP is part of this approach.