Phonics
At Meadow View, children learn to read, spell and write through a lively, fun phonics programme called 'Read, Write Inc.' (RWI). This is the systematic teaching of all the common sounds in the English language. Children are taught to recognise and say the sounds (decoding) and put them together to blend them into words for reading. It also teaches children to hear the sounds (phonemes) in words so that they can spell them (segmenting). Using Read, Write Inc, the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can then focus on comprehending what they read.
Phonics lessons may be taught in whole class groups or streamed groups, depending on which is most effective for the content being taught. When reading the RWI texts in school it may be necessary to stream children within year groups in order to ensure all children are reading texts of an appropriate difficulty.
When using Read, Write Inc. children will:
- Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/ letter groups using simple picture prompts.
- Learn to read words using 'Fred Talk'.
- Read lively stories featuring words they have learned to sound out.
- Show that they comprehend the stories by answering questions.
Phonics teaching will start in Nursery and will focus on six aspects of pre phonological awareness stages. Children need to develop their listening skills prior to embarking on the RWI programme and will do so on activities based around:
- Speech Detection.
- Syllable Awareness.
- Onset and Rime.
- Rhyme Detection.
- Initial Sounds.
- Oral Segmenting and Blending.
Alongside this, children will also be taught to correspond the phonemes (sounds) of the RWI set 1 sounds with their graphemes (written symbol that represents the sound). Children will focus on the formation of the graphemes in their names.
Phonics teaching in Reception will focus on embedding grapheme-phoneme correspondence of the RWI set 1 sounds and developing the children's ability to form letters correctly in the pre-cursive style. As the set 1 sounds are taught, children will learn to blend graphemes to read simple words/sentences and segment phonemes to spell simple words/sentences. Once children are secure with this stage, they will progress onto set 2 sounds.
Children in Year 1 will progress onto learning the set 3 sounds and will be taught the alternative graphemes, that are not included in the RWI programme, but represent the phonemes in the English language. Children will learn that some phonemes can be presented by multiple graphemes and will learn to correspond each grapheme to its phoneme. Through this, children will develop their spelling skills by beginning to choose the correct grapheme to represent phonemes when spelling words.
Children in Year 2 and above, who are unable to demonstrate an embedded knowledge of the Year 1 phonics curriculum, will continue to work on obtaining this knowledge during their time at Meadow View. Most children, including those who are able to use their phonics skills to fluently decode words, will need to work on applying their phonics knowledge in order to develop their ability to spell words accurately.
Children on the RWI programme will read in school the RWI Ditty books/ fiction story books/ non-fiction books at a level appropriate to their progress. RWI home reading 'Book Bag' texts of a matching level will be sent home for children to read with parents/carers.
Please find below a variety of PowerPoints which will help you to understand the phonics and sounds children learn. These can then be used to help support your child at home.
Thank you to all of the parents/ carers who were able to attend our Reception Phonics Workshop on Friday 17th November. If you were unable to attend, you will find all of the information given on the PowerPoint presentation below.