Read Write Inc

At Whitefriars we use Read Write Inc. Phonics (RWI) to give your child the best possible start with their literacy skills. Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school as everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible. We want your child to love reading and to want to read for themselves.

We start by teaching phonics to children in Reception where children learn how to say the sounds, blend them together to read words and to segment words for spelling. Children continue to develop these skills in further year groups as they work on more complex sounds and read books at their appropriate reading level. All children on the RWI programme are taught phonics every day and all children are assessed regularly so they work with other children at the same level. This allows all children to participate completely in lessons.

 

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’. E.g. m-o-p, c-a-t, m-a-n, sh-o-p, b-l-a-ck.

 

Fred Fingers

We use 'Fred Fingers' to help the transition between oral sounding out and spelling.Firstly, we count how many sounds we can hear:

“cat, c-a-t, 3 sounds”

Then we hold up that many fingers. For each sound, we use our other hand to squeeze a Fred Finger and say the sound:

“c-a-t”

Then we use our free hand to 'sweep' over our Fred Fingers and to blend the sounds into a word:

“cat”

The word fish needs 3 Fred Fingers - "f-i-sh". 

Words such as flight need 4 Fred Fingers - "f-l-igh-t".

As children become more confident with their sounds and spelling words, they will move away from using their Fred Fingers and instead rely on sounding out in their head.

 

Sounds

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

 

Children will also use pictures for each sound to help recognise the sound and then form the shape of the sound.

 

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXcabDUg7Q – This video will help you to hear how to pronounce sounds correctly.

 

Set 1		Set 2		Set 3
Sound	Rhyme	Sound	Rhyme	Sound	Rhyme
m	Maisie, mountain, mountain	ay	May I play?	ea	Cup of tea
a	Round the apple, down the leaf	ee	What can you see?	oi	Spoil the boy
s	Slither down the snake	igh	Fly high	a-e	Make a cake
d	Round his bottom, up his tall neck and down to his feet	ow	Blow the snow	i-e	Nice smile
t	Down the tower, across the tower	oo	Poo at the zoo	o-e	Phone home
i	Down the body, dot for the head	oo	Look at a book	u-e	Huge brute
n	Down Nobby, over his net	ar	Start the car	aw	Yawn at dawn
p	Down the plait and over the pirate’s face	or	Shut the door	are	Care and share
g	Round her face, down her hair and give her a curl	air	That’s not fair	ur	Nurse with a purse
o	All around the orange	ir	Whirl and twirl	er	A better letter
c	Curl around the caterpillar	ou	Shout it out	ow	Brown cow
k	Down the kangaroo’s body, tail and leg	oy	Toy for a boy	ai	Snail in the rain
u	Down and under, up to the top and draw the puddle			oa	Goat in a boat
b	Down the laces to the heel, round the tow			ew	Chew and stew
f	Down the stem and draw the leaves			ire	Fire fire!
e	Lift off the top and scoop out the egg			ear	Hear with your ear
l	Down the long leg			ure	Sure it’s pure?
h	Down the head to the hooves and over his back
sh	Slither down the snake, then down the horse’s head to the hooves and over his back
r	Down his back and then curl over his arm
j	Down his body, curl and dot
v	Down a wing, up a wing
y	Down a horn, up a horn and under his head
w	Down, up, down, up
th	Down the tower, across the tower, then down the horse’s head to the hooves and over his back
z	Zig-zag-zig
ch	Curl around the caterpillar, then down the horses head to the hooves and over his back
qu	Round her head, up past her earrings and down her hair
x	Down the arm and leg and repeat the other side
ng	A thing on a string
nk	I think I stink

 

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 to reading ‘Nonsense words’. This will help children’s ability to decode individual sounds and then blend them together to read. These words will also feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term. 

 

Reading books:

After children have learned enough sounds, they will begin to read 'Ditty' books in their phonics lessons. Ditty books contain three short stories that the children read. Within all the books, children will read red and green words to help them to become speedy readers. Red words are words that are not easily decodable and green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable. Dots and dashes on the cards represent the sound each letter makes.

Following Ditty books, children continue to read groups of books that have been specially written to support progress through the scheme. These books follow their own colour scheme. Each book focusses on a particular sound or set of sounds, allowing the children to practise the sounds that they have been learning most recently. Children will bring these storybooks home once they have read and discussed the book in class. They will also bring home the corresponding book bag book to read at home also.

 

The following website has more information about Read Write Inc. and has some very useful parent videos for you to watch: https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/read-write-inc-phonics-guide/