Phonics
Read, Write Inc.
At Scargill Infant School, we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who have a passion for reading and love to read and listen to a range of texts.
As Dr.Seuss says: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
We strongly believe that children who read regularly or are read to regularly will have the opportunity to open many different doors and will be able to travel to many different places. Reading will give our children the tools to become independent life-long learners.
We achieve this together through:
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Read, Write Inc - a programme that helps your child to read, we deliver this through discrete daily phonics lessons
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Encouraging children to develop a love of books by reading to them daily; at home and at school
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Giving children access to a wide range of books
Mrs Meinjtes is our Read Write Inc lead teacher, so if you have any questions about RWI, please contact our school office who can refer you to them.
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. The children are assessed by the RWI lead teacher and grouped according to their ability. Small group phonics lessons are taught daily 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.
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
Nursery
In Nursery our children will begin to learn the skills needed to develop their phonological awareness. This involves playing lots of games like Musical Statues, Mr Bear, rhyming strings and syllable counts. This helps children to develop their listening and attune into the sounds around them, laying the foundation for them to begin to learn Set 1 Phonics.
Those children that are ready to develop onto Set 1 Phonics, will begin to learn this in summer term. Children will learn 1 sound a week following the Read Write Inc sequence.
Reception
In Reception all children will learn Set 1 Phonics. Each letter of the alphabet has a sound that represents it.
You can see how to say each of the sounds by watching this video.
Children then learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. Those who are ready, will begin to read simple words within books and write some of these.
Reception use Read Write Inc rhymes to teach Letter formation.
We then begin to teach children how to put these sounds together to read short words.
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. Fred is our Read, Write Inc. friend. He can only speak in sounds, so we help him learn to say words instead of sounds. For example, Fred says 'm-a-t' instead of mat. We also teach him not to add 'uh' to our sounds to keep them pure. For example, we say 'c' and not 'cuh'.
Blending
Help your child learn to read words by sound-blending (Fred talk) eg. c-a-t = cat, sh-o-p = shop. Children learn to read words by blending the letter-sounds that are in the Speed Sounds set. Help your child to say the pure sounds ('m' not 'muh', 's' not 'suh' etc.) as quickly as they can, and then blend the sounds together to say the whole word.
Spelling with your Fred Fingers
Children are taught to use their fingers to help them write words. The children say the word out loud and break it down into its individual sounds. If a word has 3 sounds children hold up 3 fingers, 4 sounds 4 fingers etc. Children pinch each finger as they say the sounds needed in the word then they write the letters that represent each sound.
Year 1 and 2
Children follow the same format as Reception but will work on complex sounds and read books appropriate to their reading level. Daily sessions of RWI phonics last for 30 minutes.
The children are then taught Set 2 Sounds – the long vowels.
When they are very confident with all Set 1 and 2, they are taught Set 3 Sounds.
To see the different sounds in each set and the rhymes that go with them, please click on the link below:
Write Inc Complex Speed Sounds Chart
Please click on the link below to find the RWI glossary of terminology used in a Phonics session.
When children reach yellow Read Write Inc. storybooks, they will learn to trace the letters onto each finger and say the letter names.
Nonsense words (Alien words)
Research has shown that incorporating nonsense words into teaching reading can be an effective way to establish blending and segmenting skills. However, it is important to ensure that children understand that they are reading nonsense words (and why) so that they are not confused by trying to read the words for meaning. By reading nonsense words children develop their ability to decode individual sounds and then blend them together to read. They are an indicator of early reading skills and work as a quick, reliable, and valid way of assessing children. However, reading nonsense words is only a small part of the Read, Write Inc. phonics teaching.
They are also known as 'red words' in RWI or some children may know them as 'tricky words' or 'sight words'. Children will need to learn how to read these words by sight and memory as you cannot sound them out.
There are also other words the children need to learn in Years 1 and 2 and these are called Common Exception Words.
Please see the documents below for the HFW words and the Year 1 and Year 2 Common Exception Words.
First 100 High Frequency Words
Year 1 and 2 Common Exception Words
Useful links and videos:
