What is Read Write Inc?
Reading Changes Everything
Research shows that children who learn to read quickly go on to succeed in school and in life. At High Street Primary Academy we use a phonics programme called Read Write Inc.
Who Is Read Write Inc Phonics for?
Phonics is for children in Reception, Y1 and Y2 who are learning to read.
More Information
We teach sounds, children practise reading and spelling words containing these sounds, then we give children decodable books containing sounds and words they can read.
On each reading, children’s fluency increases and the more they can focus on what the story is about.
Children will also learn to spell the words they have been reading and develop their ideas into sentences so that they can write about the Storybooks they read.
Alongside this we read stories to children that they cannot yet read for themselves. Our aim is for children to finish the RWI Phonics programme quickly so they can start reading these books for themselves
What is phonics?
All words are made up of individual sounds. These sounds are merged together to form words.
e.g. in ‘mat’ we have the sounds ‘m’, ‘a’, ‘t’, ship – ‘sh’, ‘i’, ‘p’.
A grapheme is another name for the letters we use to write the sound. The spelling of that sound on the page.
Phonics is the method of teaching reading through the identification of sounds and graphemes. The National Curriculum states that all children must be taught phonics systematically. This gives your children the tools to read any word.
We use 44 sounds to make all the words in the English language. This means we’ve got a problem. We’ve got 44 sounds and only 26 letters.
The 26 letters work singly, in pairs and sometimes in threes to represent one sound.
We have to group letters together to write some sounds e.g. ‘igh’, ‘air’.
In English we have more than 150 ways to represent 44 sounds, using the 26 letters in the alphabet.
This makes our language one of the most complex in the world!
Using RWI, we make learning to read easy for children because we start by teaching them just one way of reading and writing every sound. We teach Set 1 sounds first.
Children need to know sounds – not letter names – to read words.
Once children know one way of reading and writing every sound, they start to learn spellings for each sound they already know.
For example, they know ‘ay’ and now learn a-e and ai as other spellings for the same sound.
Teach spelling using Fred Fingers
We use Fred Fingers to help children sound out words to spell easily so they do not have to memorise lists of spelling words. This is a tool to help to spell any word.
Sound Pronunciation Guide
We teach using pure sounds (‘m’ not’ muh’, ’s’ not ‘suh’, etc.), which we pronounce clearly so that your child will be able to blend the sounds together to form words more easily.
Alongside teaching children sounds, we teach them to blend sounds together to read words e.g. s-a-t, sat.
We use Fred Talk to help children read.
Here is Fred. Fred can only speak in sounds. He says d-o-g, h-a-t etc. Speaking like Fred helps children to understand that words are made up of sounds.
Fred helps children practise blending sounds together because he needs the children to say the words for him. Fred says d-o-g, children tell him the word is dog.
This is how we quickly teach all of our children to blend.
What can parents do?
- Use pure sounds, not letter names
- Use Fred Talk to read and spell words
- Listen to your child read their storybook every day
- Read stories to your child every day