"Skilled word reading involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Underpinning both is the understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words." (The National Curriculum, 2014). 

Reading is an essential part of everyday life and it is important that these skills are developed at an early age to support children later in life. Reading allows children to understand and communicate with the world. Read Write Inc. is the program we use at Allens Croft to support the teaching of reading. The children use 'fred talk' which enables them to identify sounds, decode and blend sounds together. They also learn a variety of skills which supports their understanding of  the stories they are reading. The skills that children learn in RWI are then used across the other curriculum areas. 

How to support your child at home: 

- Reading at home with your child

- Exposing your child to a variety of genres of books

- Asking questions about stories - What's happened? What might happen next? How would you change the story?

- Identifying phonetic sounds in a story 

- Completing phonic based activities sent home in homework packs 

- Play phonic based games online (e.g. phonics play)

How we teach your children to read and write?
Every child deserves success right from the start. We know that the sooner children learn to read, the greater their success at school. This is why we put reading at the heart of what we do. We use a teaching programme called Read Write Inc. to teach our children to read and write.

What is Read Write Inc?

Read Write Inc. (RWI) is a phonics complete literacy 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.  We begin the programme at the start of Reception and will continue teaching RWInc to children until they can read fluently.

RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at

https://ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/.

How will RWI be taught?

During this time, we group children by their reading progress for 45 minutes a day. For the children who recognise single letter sounds and can blend them together to read words, this is made up of a 10 minute phonics session and a 35 minutes reading session, and a focus on spellings.  For the children who are not at this stage it the session is a 30 minutes phonics session where they will learn sounds and blending. We re-assess children every 5-6 weeks or sooner, so we can place them in the group where they’ll make the most progress. We provide extra daily one-to-one and small group sessions for children.  Children also have additional speed sound sessions within their class. 

How do we make phonics easy for children to learn?
Read Write Inc. Phonics depends upon children learning to read and write sounds effortlessly, so we make it simple and fun.
Children learn to read words by sound-blending using a frog called Fred. Fred says the sounds and children help him blend the sounds to read each word. Children learn to do this orally first.

We teach them one way to read and write the 40+ sounds in English. We use pictures to help, for example we make ‘a’ into the shape of an apple, ‘f’ into the shape of a flower. These pictures help all children, especially slower-starters, to read the sounds easily.

Set 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. Please do not use letter names at this early stage. Children will also use pictures for each sound to help recognise the sound and then form the shape of the sound.

Set 2 & 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. Set 3 teaches children the different spellings of the same sounds, for example, they learn that the sound ‘ay’ is written ay, a-e and ai; the sound ‘ee’ is written ee, e and ea. We use phrases to help them remember each sound for example, ay, may I play, a-e – make a cake?

Nonsense words (Alien words)      

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 in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the Summer term.  

How do we ensure children can read every book?
The first thing we do is to give children books we know they can read – without any guessing. (We read lots of other stories to them, but do not expect them to read these yet.)

Before they read the story, they sound out the names of characters and new words, practise reading any of the trickier 'red words', and tell them a thought-provoking introduction to get them excited about the story.

Then, over three days, children read the story three times: first to focus on reading the words carefully; the second to help them read the story fluently; and on the third, we talk about the story together for example, how characters might be feeling and why. By the time your child reads the story to you at home, they will be able to read it confidently with expression. Our children also takes another book home to read, this books is matched phonetically to the book they have read in school.

How do we teach children to spell confidently?
We use just two simple activities: Fred Fingers to spell regular words and Red Rhythms for tricky words. 
 

Fred Fingers
We teach children to spell using ‘Fred Fingers’: we say a word and then children pinch the sounds onto their fingers and write the word, sound by sound.

Red Rhythms
We teach tricky words with Red Rhythms. We say the tricky letters in a puzzled or annoyed voice and build the letter names up into a rhythm, for example, s-ai-d.
 

How do we make writing simple for children to learn?
In reception we teach writing through Read Write Inc. We teach handwriting, spelling and composition separately, gradually bringing each skill together step-by-step.

We teach children to form letters with the correct pencil grip and in the correct sitting position from the very beginning. They practise handwriting every day so they learn to write quickly and easily. This is through the Nelson Handwriting Scheme. 

Once children can write simple words, we teach them to ‘hold’ a sentence in their heads and then write it with correct spelling and punctuation.

Very soon children are able to write down their own ideas. We try out different sentences together, drawing on new vocabulary and phrases from the storybook they’ve just read. They practise saying their sentences out loud first so they don’t forget their ideas while they’re writing. They also learn to proofread their own writing using ready-made sentences containing common grammar, punctuation and spelling errors.

Story and poetry time 
Storytime is the highlight of every day. We have a bank of stories that children get to know really well, and others we read just for fun. Children learn to retell the story, learn the refrains by heart and act out the stories in the role-play area. Children love to learn poetry too.