Strong development in early reading is one of the most important aspects of a child’s education, and phonics is a key part of this.
Read Write Inc. is taught daily in Reception and Year 1, with children moving off the programme as they progress through year 2. Children enjoy their lessons immensely and rapidly learn a complex alphabetical code which they apply to their reading and writing.
As their confidence and fluency grows, we start to introduce more sounds (Set 2 and then 3) and the children read texts with increasingly more complex sounds and graphemes (different ways of spelling the sounds, e.g. /igh/, /ie/ or /ay/, /ai/). They learn that a sound can be written using 2 or 3 or even 4 letters. We call this a grapheme (e.g. igh represents the /i/ sound in the word night). Equally they learn to use these graphemes to spell words.
Phonics Screen Check Sound Book
Workshops and Further Support
Parents and carers are invited to workshops run by the Reading Leader throughout the year to find out how the programme runs in the school as well as learn how you can support your children at home.
Parents and carers can buy the RWI phonics cards from the Reception at £5 per pack.
Year 1 Phonics Screening Test
Each June, all children in Year 1 do a phonics screening test. This is a short assessment, required by government, to find out how accurately children are reading decodable words. Children will be asked to ‘sounds out’ a word and then blend the sounds together. For example:
d–o–g dog f-air fair l-igh-t light
The children will be asked to read real words and made up ‘alien’ words.
How you can help your child at home:
Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when reading and writing. Practice the sounds using either the sound cards (which are available at Reception) or the sound mat overleaf. Encourage children to find the more tricky sounds when reading.
Diagraph: 2 letters making one sound cow start saw
Trigraph:3 letters making one sound night fair pure
Split Diagraphs: 2 vowels making one sound with a letter in between make cube bone
There is more information on Read Write Inc. phonics here or via Facebook here. The Facebook page has guidance on pronunciation of key sounds to help you at home.
Below is also a letter with comprehensive information on how phonics is taught at Jubilee which we send to parents, top tips on reading for enjoyment with young children and a guide to handwriting using Read Write Inc.