We place great emphasis on developing good language skills and will encourage your child to develop fluency and understanding in reading. Pupils learn to read using various approaches to word recognition. They are taught the sounds of spoken language in order to develop phonic skills. At the early stages, Read, Write Inc phonics and the Oxford Reading Tree reading schemes are used with books from other schemes extending the vocabulary and styles of writing.
Saying the Sounds and Blending
Help your child learn to read words by sounding-blending (Fred talk) eg. c-a-t = cat, sh-o-p = shop. Children learn to read words by blending the letter-sounds that are in the Speed Sounds set (shown further down the page).
Help your child to say the pure sounds ('m' not 'muh', 's' not 'suh' etc.) as quickly as they can, and then blend the sounds together to say the whole word.
Watch the video below to see how to say each sound. Click the picture below to learn how to say the sounds.
Parent video: How to say the sounds
Reading
When using RWI to read the children will:
Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple prompts
- Learn to read words using sound blending (Fred talk)
- Read lively stories featuring words they have learnt to sound out
- Show that they comprehend the stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove It'
Writing
When using RWI to write the children will:
- Learn to write the letter/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds
- Learn to write words by saying the sounds and graphemes (Fred fingers)
Talking
When using RWI the children will also work in pairs:
- To answer questions
- To take turns talking and listening to each other
- To give positive praise to each other
The children are first taught to read one way of spelling the sounds first.
We then introduce more ways to spell the same sounds. Read Write Inc only teaches the most common ways of spelling the sounds. Less common graphemes are taught through the story books in lesson time.
Reading Comprehension
As part of learning to read, your child will learn about reading comprehension. As well as learning how to read words, it is important that children have a good understanding of what they are reading. The focus will move more heavily towards comprehension and away from phonics as your child becomes more confident with word reading.
