All children are assessed regularly by our RWI lead teacher. From these assessments children are grouped into stages, where they work with peers on the same stage.
In Reception, all children will learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down.
The children:
The children:
The children work in pairs so that they:
Children follow the same format as Early Years as they move to KS1, but will work on complex sounds and read books appropriate to their reading level. Daily sessions of RWI phonics take place. Once children become fluent speedy readers they will move on to the RWI Spelling programme.
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:
Before you start to teach your child, practice saying the sounds below. These are the sounds we use to speak in English. Children initially begin using pictures for each sound, this will help children recognise the sound and then form the shape of the sound.
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’. E.g. m-o-p, c-a-t, m-a-n, sh-o-p, b-l-a-ck.
The following video is an example of blending sounds with Fred.
The children are taught the sounds in 3 sets.
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
Use the link below to hear how to pronounce the sounds correctly.
www.ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/#lg=1&slide=3
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.
As well as learning to read and blend real words children will have plenty of opportunities to apply their sound recognition skills on reading ‘Nonsense words’. These words will also feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term. These words provide endless opportunities for children to apply and practice their thinking in a range of different contexts.
Children will be introduced to ‘Ditty books’ when they successfully begin to read single words. The short vowels should be kept short and sharp.
Children use sound-blending (Fred Talk) to read short ditties. They will bring these home once they have read and discussed the book in class. Children will then be challenged to use their developing phonic knowledge to write short sentences.
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 (“You can’t Fred a red”) 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.
Once your child has been introduced and taught these words in school, we will send them home for you to continue practising with your child. 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 have heard your child talking about ‘hold 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.
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! Following on from this, they will bring a comprehension based book which will begin to enrich their reading, which will require decoding skills. Only then, children will bring home enriched reading books which will enhance their understanding via inspirational language promoting depth to their understanding.
We are proud to be part of the Lincoln Anglican Academy Trust more
Whaplode Church of England Primary School
Mill Lane
Whaplode
Lincolnshire
PE12 6TS
Telephone: 01406 370447
Email: enquiries@whaplode.laat.co.uk
