Phonics & Early Reading

Read Write Inc (RWI) Phonics

Phonics at Five Spires Academy

At Five Spires Academy, we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading.

Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds!

More importantly, reading will give your child the tools to become independent life-long learners.

We can achieve this together through:

Read Write Inc, a program to help to your child read at school
Encouraging children to develop a love of books by reading to them daily, at home and at school
Giving children access to a wide range of books at school and at home

What is Read Write Inc?

Read Write Inc (RWI) is a phonics programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling. It also allows them to spell effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into composing what they write.

How will RWI be taught?

Read Write Inc is taught every day in school to ensure every child makes rapid progress. All children are assessed regularly and grouped according to their ability. Small group phonics lessons are taught by trained staff and there are consistent expectations across the range of abilities. At the end of each half term the children are assessed to check on their progress and regrouped.

Nursery & Reception

When appropriate, children will be introduced to the initial sounds in short five-minute sessions.

In Reception all children will learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down.

Reading

The children:

Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts – see below
Learn to read words using Fred talk and sound blending
Read from a range of storybooks and non-fiction books matched to their phonic knowledge
Work well with partners
Develop comprehension skills in stories by answering ‘Find It’ and ‘Prove It’ discussion questions

Writing

The children:

Learn to write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds with the help of fun phrases
Learn to write words by using Fred Talk
Learn to build sentences by practising sentences out loud before they write

Talking

The children work in pairs so that they can do the following:

Answer every question
Practise every activity with their partner

Take turns in talking and reading to each other
Develop ambitious vocabulary

Progressing through the stages

Children follow the same format as Early Years but will work on complex sounds and read books appropriate to their reading level. Daily sessions of RWI phonics last up to one hour (30 minutes in Reception). Once children become fluent and speedy readers, they will move on to the RWI Spelling programme which is followed through the rest of the school.

Five key principles underpin the teaching in all Read Write Inc. sessions:  

Purpose – know the purpose of every activity and share it with the children, so they know the one thing they should be thinking about

Participation – ensure every child participates throughout the lesson - partnership work is fundamental to learning

Praise – ensure children are praised for effort and learning, not ability

Pace – teach at an effective pace and devote every moment to teaching and learning

Passion – be passionate about teaching so children can be engaged emotionally.

Children will be taught how to read as follows:

Below are the sounds we use to speak in English. Children initially begin using pictures for each sound which will help them to first recognise the sound and then form the shape of the sound. 

Fred Talk

We use pure sounds (‘m’ not’ muh’,’s’ not ‘suh’, etc.) so that your child will be able to blend the sounds into words more easily.

At school we use a puppet called Fred who is an expert on sounding out words! We call it, ‘Fred Talk’.

Fred can only say the sounds in a word and needs your child to help him read the word. Fred will say the sounds and children will work out the word. For example, Fred will say the sounds c–a–t, and children will say the word cat. This is Fred Talk: sounding out the word.

The children are taught the sounds in 3 sets.

Step 1:

Set 1 Sounds are taught in the following order together with rhymes to help children form the letters correctly and instantly recognise sounds ready for blending.

At this stage we do not use the letter names

Step 2:

The children are then taught Set 2 Sounds – the long vowels. When they are very confident with all of set 1 and 2 they are taught Set 3 Sounds which are alternative ways of making the set 2 Sounds.

Alternative sound taught as a 'red' word, for example: he, me, we, she, be

Nonsense words (Alien words): What ‘a load’ of nonsense!   
 

As well as learning to read and blend real words, children will have plenty of opportunities to apply their sound recognition skills when reading ‘Nonsense words’. These words will also feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term.  The words provide endless opportunities for children to apply and practice their thinking in a range of different contexts. 

Step 3:

Within all the RWI sessions/books children will be exposed to red and green words to learn to help them to become speedy readers. Red words are words that are not easily decodable and challenge words to extend children’s vocabulary. Green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable.

Dots and dashes represent the sound each letter makes.

During the RWI session children will read the book three times and at each new reading they will have plenty of opportunities to practise using their developing comprehension skills. You may hear your child talking about ‘hold, edit or build a sentence’.

Hold a sentence is an activity that encourages children to remember a whole sentence while focusing on spelling and punctuation.

Build a sentence is to give children the opportunity to create their own sentence to that shows the meaning of a word and edit a sentence allows the children to critique a sentence using their knowledge of spelling punctuation and grammar. Children complete a longer piece of independent writing, which gives them the opportunity to show off their creativity and to practice their spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

To help at home:

Your child will start to bring books home when they are confident readers, relating to their reading stage. You will find they will bring home a phonics-based book, this will aid application, speed and fluency: developing speedy reading!  They will also bring a ‘book bag’ book which will begin to enrich their reading and will require decoding skills as it will be new to them – though the sounds will not be. In addition, your child can choose a ‘share a story’ book which you can read with / to your child. This book may have sounds that they have not learnt yet, so we do not expect them to read these. Once they are fluent and confident readers, children will bring home a wider range and choice of books.

Useful websites for Parents:

CBeebies Bedtime Stories