Read Write Inc. at St Anthony’s

At St Anthony’s, we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading.

Children who read regularly and who are read to regularly, have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds! More importantly, reading will gives children the tools to become independent life-long learners.

We can achieve this through:

• Read Write Inc, a program to help children to 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

At St Anthony’s we use Read Write Inc Phonics (RWI) in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, to give our child the best possible start with their literacy.

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 will begin to introduce the programme to children in Nursery children, when ready, and will continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7 if they still need support in their reading.

RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at https://ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/.

All children are assessed regularly (at least half termly) by our RWI leaders and then grouped accordingly, these groupings are fluid and children can move to their correct level at any time of the school year. Each group works at the same level which allows all the children to participate fully all of the time. The groups are kept as small as possible and activities are fun, active and fast paced.

Nursery

When appropriate, children will be introduced to the initial sounds in short five minutes sessions.

Reception

In Reception, all children will learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down.

Reading

The children:

• learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts – see below
• 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

The 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

The children

• They work in pairs so that they:
• answer every question
• practise every activity with their partner
• take turns in talking and reading to each other
• develop ambitious vocabulary

Year One & Year Two

Children in Year 1 and 2 are grouped and follow the same format as Reception but will work on more complex sounds and read books appropriate to their reading level. Daily sessions of RWI phonics take place 4 mornings a week for 30 minutes. Once children become fluent speedy readers, they will move on to spelling and literacy activities in Year One or spelling and grammar activities in Year Two.

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.

Fred Talk

We use pure sounds (‘m’ not’ muh’,’s’ not ‘suh’, etc.) so that children 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 children are taught the sounds in 3 sets (and are grouped accordingly).

Step 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.

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

Step 2:

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.

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 feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term. 

Step 3:

Children will be introduced to ‘Ditty books’ when they successfully begin to read single words.

Children use sound-blending (Fred Talk) to read short ditties. They will bring these home once they have read and discussed the book in class. Children will then be challenged to use their developing phonic knowledge to write short sentences.

Within all the books, children will have red and green words to learn to help them to become speedy readers. Red words are words that are not easily decodable and challenge words to extend children’s vocabulary. Green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable.

Dots and dashes represent the sound each letter makes.

As the children are introduced and taught these words in school, they will be sent home for them to be continually practised with the child.

During the RWI sessions, children will read the book three times and at each new reading they will have plenty of opportunities to practise using their developing comprehension skills.