PHONICS
Intention
Out of everything we do at Hepworth, teaching reading is our most important job.
Our aim is to teach all children to decode unfamiliar words by the time they leave Year 1. From Year 2 onwards, we aim to teach children to read with fluency, expression and understanding and to use what they have read to broaden their understanding of the wider curriculum.
We aim to create a love of reading, by sharing daily high-quality books with our children, by reading to and with them, and by supporting our parents to make reading an enjoyable part of their daily routine.
We choose books that make our children think and question. Our books both reflect the community in which the children live and introduce them to lives different from their own. Children read widely across the curriculum, in all forms, including non-fiction books, magazines and newspapers and digital formats.
At Hepworth we teach phonics using Read Write Inc (RWI) RWI is a method of learning centred round letter sounds and phonics, and we use it to aid children in their reading and writing.
Read Write Inc. Phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing, which is centred around learning the sounds of the letters (phonics) and then blending them together to read words. The children also learn to break down words into individual sounds in order to write them – we call this segmenting.
When using RWI to read the children will:
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Learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into understanding what they read.
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Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts.
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Learn to read words using Fred Talk.
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Learn to read words by blending the sounds together.
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Read lively stories featuring words they have learnt to sound out.
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Show that they understand the stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove it' discussion questions.
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Read ‘Red Words’ which are not easily sounded out also know as common exception words or tricky words
When using RWI to write the children will:
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Spell effortlessly so that they can put their energy into working out what they want to write.
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Spell ‘Red Words’ correctly
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Learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds (graphemes).
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Form letters correctly using letter rhymes e.g. a – round the apple and down the leaf
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Learn to write words by saying the sounds in Fred Talk.
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Learn to write simple and then increasingly complex sentences.
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Compose a range of texts using discussion prompts.
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Compose stories based on picture strips.
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Write simple sentences.
Blending
Children learn to read words by blending the letter sounds that are in the Speed Sound sets. Help your child learn to read words by sound-blending e.g. c-a-t = cat. Help children to say the pure sounds, as quickly as they can and then to blend the sounds together to say the whole word. We also call these ‘Green Words’.
In school children will have 30-40minutes of phonics a day. During this session they will read a story book and do lots of different reading and writing activities from this book throughout the week. This book will be sent home as a paper copy for you to practice at home, with a focus on comprehension and fluency. This will be accompanied with a book bag story book, also changed each week. Children will also be sent home an independent reading book when they near the end of the phonics programme. When children first start in reception they will start by bringing home a sound blending book.
Here are the 3 sets of sounds
Please find below links to parent help videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXOJUPNVnLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjlPILhk7bQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbKGLJPp6ww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNyFikwNQTg
Read Write Inc Terminology
At school we use a puppet called Fred who is an expert on sounding out words!
The following video is an example of blending sounds with Fred.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEzfpod5w_Q
