At Darton Primary School we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading. Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds. More importantly, reading will give your child the tools to become independent life-long learners.
We can achieve this together through:
- Read Write Inc, a program to help to your child read at school
- Encouraging children to develop a love of books by reading to them daily, at home and at school
- Giving children access to a wide range of books at school and at home
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. The programme is designed for children aged 4-7 however we continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7, as we use a stage not age approach.
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.
Through daily phonics using the RWI children will develop their knowledge and skills in the following ways.
Reading
Children:
- Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts
- Learn to read words using Fred talk and sound blending
- Read from a range of storybooks and non-fictions books matched to their phonic knowledge
- Work well with partners
- Develop comprehension skills in stories by answering ‘Find It’ and ‘Prove It’ discussion questions
Writing
Children:
- Learn to write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds with the help of fun phrases
- Learn to write words by using Fred Talk
- Learn to build sentences by practising sentences out loud before they write
Talking
Children:
- Work in pairs
- Answer every question
- Practise every activity with their partner
- Take turns in talking and reading to each other
- Develop ambitious vocabulary
Our whole school approach begins in Nursery where we concentrate on developing children’s speaking and listening skills. The emphasis in Nursery is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.
In Nursery phonics is divided into seven aspects:
- Environmental sounds
- instrumental sounds
- body percussion
- rhythm and rhyme
- alliteration
- voice sounds
- oral blending and segmenting
Phonics continues into Foundation Stage 2 and Key Stage 1. Pupils are grouped according to individual needs and ability. Children have a daily phonics lesson which lasts between 10 – 40 minutes depending on the stage they are at.
At Darton Primary School we follow the Read Write Inc programme. In Read Write Inc Phonics lessons, children learn to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension. They learn to form each letter, spell correctly, build sentences based on ideas from the story book and apply grammar concepts linked to the story. As children build up their knowledge of phonemes, they are able to apply their decoding skills to any unfamiliar word may it be real or nonsense. During lessons children also practice their skills by sounding out the letters in alien/nonsense words. Children are unable to rely on existing knowledge of real words, and instead have to use their grapheme-phoneme knowledge. We believe an understanding of technical language is important and should be modelled by those teaching phonics sessions. Children are introduced and encourage to use the correct terminology when discussing phonics.
- phoneme- the smallest unit of sound
- grapheme- a written representation of a phoneme
- digraph- 2 letters which make 1 sound
- trigraph- 3 letters which make 1 sound
- split digraph- a digraph which is split by a consonant
Children rapidly learn the phonemes and graphemes that represent them. Simple and enjoyable mnemonics (memory phrases) help children to grasp the phoneme and grapheme correspondence quickly.
As children build up their knowledge of sounds, they are able to apply their decoding skills to any unfamiliar word may it be real or nonsense. Once a child is secure in their phonic knowledge tans can fluently read ‘blue RWI books’, they will transition to LIRA reading instruction.
Reading At Home
We promote reading at home and provide RWI books and library books that are carefully matched to a pupil’s phonic or reading level. Reading books are levelled to match the progression in phonics in order to offer children a range of fiction and non-fiction texts to challenge them at an appropriate level and to ensure accelerated learning. These books will be changed once per week (on a Friday) to enable opportunities for re-reading to develop fluency.
Assessment
Children are assessed half termly and are grouped according to ability. In addition to identifying children who need additional intervention we can also target children who are exceeding age-related expectations and challenge appropriately.
Fred Talk & Pure Sounds
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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEzfpod5w_Q
Set 1 Parent Booklet